Well, it might not be, depending on your motivation and your understanding of the cause and effect. If you truly did not understand the consequences of your actions, you might be found to be an incapacitated person who could not be charged with a crime. Or, if you thought it was just a prank, and didn't actually mean to injure or kill people, there might be a less severe punishment. The law acknowledges and provides for different degrees of malice and intent.

You said that the reason for a crime does not matter. Maybe it shouldn't, to you. However, our legal system has evolved to take motivations into account, both in crimes and in tort.

But if you intend to kill someone for cash and picked them because they are old or black, you still murdered them for equally stupid reasons and deserve to go away for the rest of your life, equally.
If you mugged them for the same reasons you deserve the same sentence. They are equally reprehensible reasons to harm someone and their hurt is equal.
Justice is not vengeance and never should be.

Lizzie Borden took and axe
Gave her mother 40 whacks,
When she saw what she had done
She gave her father 41.

But lizzie walked away scott free
She was not hung from any tree,
It's hard to say at this late date
But I think because she didn't hate.

:D

If you shoot a person trying to rape your wife or kid, is it murder?

Sure. It may be that a jury acquits you because it's justifiable, but it's murder.

If you're acquitted, legally it wasn't murder.

...would you feel it wrong if you were sentenced to death/life imprisonment?

How about if you littered by disposing of a dog's head on the owner's front porch in a gift wrapped box? Should you get a ticket for littering, or is that a more serious crime because of your intent to terrorize them?

Word games. Is killing in war murder? How about political assassination? Capital punishment, abortion, euthanasia, vehicular homicide?

Justifiable homicide is murder - the jury merely felt ok with your murdering ways.

Exactly. Motive counts.

I think she did RK. For Bri's example she used names like 'Billybob' and 'Abdul'.
I think that speak volumes about stereotypes.



(Thinking out loud. *Anyone who names their kid Billybob should be charged with a hate crime*:P)

State sanctioned murder is absolutely murder, strapping someone to a chair or bed and killing them is murder.
"Capitol Punishment" is just a nice way of putting it. It is murder.
There is nothing about it that can be sanely interpreted as self-defense.

Dar true, but doesn't mean it's not justified and/or acceptable to a reasonable society. ;)

I think it means exactly that.
Murdering a murderer makes you one. Reason, states that clearly.

Should murder be taught in school as a bad thing? Granted this type of issue has been seen as a parental responsibility for quite some time I'm guessing it hasn't quite worked out very well.

I say if people can't/wont think for themselves anymore, why should they? I suppose you've got the right to be stupid, there's no crime against idoicy only the results of it.