The Illustrated Guide to Criminal Law
Chapter 11: Excuse Me!
Excuse pg 8: Elements of the Provocation Defense
Fred was charged with murdering the plumber. At trial, he asserted a provocation defense, claiming that he was in a murderous rage for a damn good reason, and so he must therefore be excused.
Fred in the witness box, making his case.
FRED
It’s not that I was insane at the time,
just that you can’t blame me for reacting the way I did!
So he’s going to need the jury to believe that:
(1) The plumber provoked him,
(2) into a passion that overcame his reason,
(3) He killed in the heat of that passion, and
(4) A “reasonable person” in that situation would have been just as provoked.
Well, 1-3 seem pretty straightforward. He may have a problem with 4 though. While a reasonable person might be provoked into getting violent in that situation, there’s a bit of a difference between “getting violent” and “beating a man to death”.
Is there, though? What if Fred had only punched the plumber one time, but it happened to have been the *single blow* that crushed his windpipe (or struck the temple, or blinded him, or broke something and caused a fragment of bone to pierce the brain, heart, or something similarly important)? Once someone chooses to engage in violence in which they’re swinging at full force, they can’t really be expected to maintain enough control over the situation to control exactly how badly the other person gets hurt.
It’s a bit inconsistent, I think, to make that a factor in whether or not to hold him responsible- if a reasonably strong adult swings a fist at full force at another person exactly once, with no regard for or (more importantly) control over where the blow lands, the consequence might be anything from a brief pain to a crippling or fatal injury depending on little more than sheer chance, with no meaningful difference in the attacker’s actual action.
I’m just saying, in this particular example, either the guy is culpable, or he isn’t, if we’re basing it solely on provocation and his mental state. (Whether he is or isn’t by that fourth bullet point is incredibly subjective, of course.)
This is more or less covered earlier, in the part about transferred intent and a heavy plate getting thrown at a wife. Suffice to say that if you intend to physically injure someone, actually do injure them, and as a result they die, you’re almost certainly on the hook for murder.