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Second Degree Murder Research Paper

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First degree murder is when someone had a prior plan to kill another person. Even if you only thought about it for a little while, it still counts as first degree. You carry a pretty high penalty for committing this crime, which is life imprisonment. For example, if someone did you wrong, and you were really mad about it (to the point of murder) and you planned out what you were going to do to kill them, that is first degree. Second degree murder is when someone does not plan to kill a specific person but does have the intention of killing. For example, if you were robbing a bank and you killed an innocent bystander, that is malice aforethought and that is considered second degree murder. The punishment for this is a long term (20 years) or lifetime sentence in prison because it is not as severe as first degree. (????) Involuntary manslaughter is pretty similar to second degree murder, but there was no previous intention to kill someone. It is basically when someone is doing something dangerous that could harm them themselves, and do not have any intention of harming others, but in the end they do end up hurting another person. This is called criminal negligence.
Jurors actually have a lot of things that they have to do in court. First, they have to take an oath having them agree to having no bias in their …show more content…
While the case is going on, the jurors are not allowed to discuss with the other jurors and must pay attention the whole time in order to be able to tell who is being truthful. One of their main jobs is determining credibility, so they have to be completely focused and be listening in order to do that. They also cannot do any research on anything pertaining to the case prior to coming into court so that it insures that none of the jurors are biased. Whenever the jury has reached a verdict and left the courtroom, they are permitted to talk about the case outside of court, but never before the decision was

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