Intentional Homicide

According to Wisconsin law intentional homicide is defined as ending a person´s life with intent to kill or to do considerable bodily harm. Premeditated murder is a form of intentional homicide that is defined as ending another person´s life with malice and aforethought. Malice deals with the premeditation of the murder, the planning of the crime, or as simple as just thinking about carrying out the murder. Aforethought is a reflection of the act, a second thought, a second-guessing, or a mulling over of the thought in one´s mind. Premeditated murder is charged as first-degree intentional homicide.

First Degree Intentional Homicide:
According to Wisconsin law, any homicide that is carried out with intent to kill or do significant physical harm is a first-degree intentional homicide crime. If a homicide occurs under mitigating circumstances, the charge can be dropped to second-degree intentional homicide or even non-criminal homicide.

Mitigating Circumstances:
If there are mitigating circumstances while a homicide is being carried out, a first-degree intentional homicide may be downgraded to second-degree intentional homicide or dropped altogether. Mitigating circumstances entail many factors including sufficient aggravation (a ´heat of passion´ murder), prevention of a felony, unnecessary defensive force, and coercion of necessity.

Second Degree Intentional Homicide:
Second degree intentional homicide is comprised of intentional homicide crimes that are not first degree, first degree intentional homicides that were carried out under mitigating circumstances, and various other homicide crimes for instance a homicide that was carried out during the distribution of a controlled substance.

Unintended Victim of Homicide:
If the victim of a criminal homicide is not the planned victim, the criminal homicide is still a crime. In most cases, if the victim was unintentionally killed, the homicide is still criminal because the plan to aim and fire existed. There are way to many ´what ifs´ and mitigating circumstances involved with homicide to explain it all in this section.

Unintended Homicide Results:
If the intention of an act is not to cause death, but a death is still the outcome, the homicide may still be charged as a criminal homicide in specific situations, and could be charged regardless of whether or not the circumstances back up the charge. An example of differing circumstances would be if a hunter were to shoot a deer with the intent to kill it, and accidentally kill a person, and a person shoots a gun at a house with the intent to scare residents and unintentionally kills someone. In Wisconsin both of these situations would possibly end up being charged as criminal homicide.

Unborn Child:
According to Wisconsin law, any person who kills an unborn child could be charged with murder. If the action resulted in the death of an unborn child, and the victim is an unborn child, then the criminal charge would be the same as if the victim were wholly born or an adult.

The state of Wisconsin permits the abortion of a fetus by a medical expert who has been licensed to perform an abortion between the moments of conception through the statutory time limit as prescribed by law. Abortion is not a crime if it is carried out during the imposed time frame. It is interesting to note that the appellate court stated that the laws against killing an unborn child should not be interpreted as an indication of the courts stance on abortion.