Is it murder if you're drunk?

There is a lot of misunderstanding of the difference between murder and manslaughter. The legal definition of Murder is not so simple as "deliberate killing" and Manslaughter is not "accidental killing".

Murder is assault resulting in death, whether death was the intention or not. For example, it is sufficient to be convicted of murder if you just stab someone "only with the intention of disabling them" but they subsequently die.

The important point is that to be convicted of murder the killer either had to deliberately kill someone OR be reckless as to whether they died or not.

In your scenario the man recklessly fired his gun in a public place. Therefore if anyone died, either directly from being shot or as a result of injuries sustained "as a result" of the shooting (e.g. they were crushed in the crowd panic rush), then the gunman is guilty of murder.

Manslaughter is what he would be accused of if the victim died as a result of something not directly connected with the act but as a result of circumstances which would not have occurred if the act had not taken place, AND the perpetrator had no intention to harm the victim in any way at all. ("I fired the gun as a warning but he got in the way" is not manslaughter because the act of firing the gun was Reckless).

Being drunk (or on drugs) is NEVER accepted as an excuse or mitigating factor for any offence at all in a UK court. In fact, for some crimes (like motoring offences) it can actually increase the punishment awarded.

The only difference "planning" or "random" would make is to the number of years in prison before parole can be considered. The man is still guilty of murder and the mandatory sentence is LIFE. If he is released on licence then he can be recalled to finish his life sentence at any time if he misbehaves.

He would be tried for murder. Where one offence is the less serious version of the other, the Crown Prosecution Service will almost always bring a charge of the more serious offence, knowing that the court has the option of convicting of the less serious offence. In a murder case the jury always has three choices:

1. Convict of murder

2. Acquit of murder but find him guilty of manslaughter

3. Acquit.

It is the judge's duty, and this is possibly the most serious duty of a judge in a Crown Court trial, to explain all this clearly to the jury. He or she will do this in his or her summing-up speech, in which he or she will summarise the evidence - and he or she must be totally unbiased in doing this - tell the jury what they have to decide and remind them that if they want to convict, they have to be sure beyond reasonable doubt.

I experienced something of this while on jury service 13 years ago. It was a paedophile rape trial, there were charges of both rape and indecent assault (it would be called sexual assault now) and it was a live issue whether there had been rape or not. There was no question that he certainly hadn't had full sexual intercourse with any of the girls involved, but what degree of sexual penetration changes it from indecent assault to rape, and therefore we should convict him of both? The judge would have had to explain that to us were it not for the fact that the prosecution called a doctor as an expert witness, and she explained it all to us with biology textbook diagrams handed round the jury box! Six copies, one between two. (Just out of interest, we found him guilty on all counts, and then the prosecution barrister told the court he had "previous" for this. As is normal in a Crown Court, the judge didn't sentence there and then but applied for probation and other reports, and as I was told to if I wanted to find out the sentence, I rang the court 4 weeks later to find out what it was. He got life imprisonment. I forgot to ask what the minimum term was.)

If it is a live issue as to whether it is murder or manslaughter, that's quite tricky. The difference between the two tends to occupy whole chapters in English criminal law textbooks. It certainly does in Smith & Hogan's "Criminal Law" which I have a copy of and is one of the standard textbooks. Even The Tank's definition isn't quite right. Both are common law offences so they are only defined by previous court decisions. Murder is "unlawful killing with malice aforethought". Malice aforethought has been further defined in court as meaning the intention to cause death or grievous bodily harm. So it's not as simple as saying that murder is intentional and manslaughter is not. Convictions for manslaughter, other than manslaughter due to diminished responsibility (i.e. he is criminally insane) tend to be fairly rare because it would have to be shown that death was the result of a pure accident.

Handguns are almost totally illegal in English law so we also have the question of what he was doing with an unlicensed firearm (and he would be prosecuted for that too). Why would you have one, if not with the intention of causing deadly harm? Americans probably won't agree with that but English law will certainly take it that way. So we can definitely forget manslaughter.

Being drunk only makes it worse. English law presumes that you shouldn't be drunk and irresponsible, and if you are, that's just an aggravating factor the judge takes into account when passing sentence.

You might find a consideration of sentencing useful for your book. The mandatory sentence for murder is life imprisonment, so it comes down to a consideration of the minimum term. The starting point for the judge's thinking about murder with a firearm is 30 years, with multiple murders that will go up, and a whole life minimum (he will never be released) is a real possibility. In the UK that is fairly rare - there are fewer than 50 prisoners with a whole life tariff - but the likelihood is that he would get that because of being such a danger to the public.

What makes a life sentence a life sentence is that even if he ever is released, he is on a life licence, meaning he has to report to probation regularly for the rest of his life and must live in accordance with conditions given in the licence. These will include that he has to live only at an approved address, cannot leave the UK even for a holiday, can only do a job his probation officer approves of, and if he ever does the slightest thing wrong again he goes straight back to prison.

If when in posession of a firearm got himself drunk senseless then he would face a murder charge.

If the firearm was unknown to him or his drinks were spiked with drugs or additional alcohol, then you have some kind of defence.

In the first scenario you could put a character defence to have it reduced to manslaughter. Someone with no history of violence and no motive to harm any of the victims, is unlikely to be convicted of murder, but that would still be for a jury to decide.

The only other possible defence might be something like somnambulism, or a psychotic episode he would have to have had a clear medical history of sleepwalking and in the case of psychosis your are gone to find it difficult to convince a jury. If he had a preexisting mental health condition he would not have a gun license.

Yup.

Being drunk is never a legal defense for a criminal action. His intoxication level (assuming he didn't plan this while sober) would probably mean he was tried for 2nd degree, rather than 1st degree, homicide. Although if he killed multiple people all this would mean is that he would avoid the death penalty if he lived in a State that had it.

Murder is when you do it deliberately

Manslaughter is an accident

Regardless of if hes jump if he went in to a cinema with a weapon its deemed "with an itent to harm" so itd be murder

Yes.

dumbest novel ever, i demand you sue yourself for stupidity