Manslaughter is a crime in the United States. Definitions can vary among jurisdictions, but manslaughter is invariably the act of causing the death of another person in a manner less culpable than murder.
Voluntary manslaughter involves the intentional killing of a person in which the offender did not have prior intent to kill. The defendant may have the intention of causing serious injury short of death. The following are some examples of defenses that may be raised to mitigate murder to voluntary manslaughter:
Heat of passion: A killing that occurs after provocation by an event which would cause a reasonable person to lose self-control. There must not be a cooling off period negating provocation. If there is an interval between the provocation and killing sufficient to allow the passion of a reasonable person to cool, the homicide is not manslaughter, but murder.
Imperfect self-defense: In some jurisdictions, a person who acted in self-defense with an honest but unreasonable belief that deadly force was necessary to do so can reduce a murder charge to one of voluntary manslaughter or deliberate homicide committed without criminal malice.
Diminished capacity is a defense that may negate the mental state of "malice". If a jurisdiction recognizes that a person can kill without justification but also without any evil intent, for example due to a mental defect or mental illness, that jurisdiction may define the person's crime as something less than murder. This partial defense is only available in some U.S. jurisdictions and not others; whereas the complete defense of insanity is available throughout the U.S. but is rarely used because it is more difficult to prove.
Involuntary manslaughter is the killing of another person without the intent to kill, but where the person's death occurs as a result of the negligent or reckless actions of the defendant.
Constructive manslaughter
In the United States, constructive manslaughter, also known as unlawful act manslaughter, is a lesser version of felony murder, and covers a person who causes the death of another while committing a misdemeanorthat is, a violation of law that does not rise to the level of a felony. Such a law may allow for conviction for the homicide if the misdemeanor law that was violated by the defendant is a law designed to protect human life.
In some U.S. jurisdictions, if a person is so reckless as to "manifest extreme indifference to human life", the defendant may be guilty of aggravated assault as well as of involuntary manslaughter. In some U.S. jurisdictions, malice may be found if the defendant's actions reflect willful or depraved indifference to human life. In such a case, even though the injury to the victim was not intended, the wrongdoer may be guilty of second degree murder.
Vehicular manslaughter
is a class C felony which holds people liable for any death which occurs because of criminal negligence, or a violation of traffic safety laws. A common use of the vehicular manslaughter laws involves prosecution for a death caused by driving under the influence of intoxicating substances, although an independent infraction, or negligence, is usually also required. In Wisconsin, a person who causes death with any type of motor vehicle while legally intoxicated may be liable and charged with homicide by intoxicated use of a motor vehicle. Culpability lies with the perpetrator. The maximum penalty for homicide by intoxicated use of a vehicle is twenty-five years in prison, but with a prior OWI offense the maximum penalty may be increased to forty years in prison. In the State of Texas, intoxication manslaughter is a distinctly defined offense. A person commits intoxication manslaughter if he, or she, operates a motor vehicle in a public place, operates an aircraft, a watercraft, or an amusement ride, or assembles a mobile amusement ride while intoxicated and, by reason of that intoxication, causes the death of another by accident or mistake. Intoxication manslaughter, vehicular manslaughter and other similar offenses require a lesser mens rea than other manslaughter offenses. Furthermore, the fact that the defendant is entitled to use the alcohol, controlled substance, drug, dangerous drug, or other substance, is no defense. For example, to prove intoxication manslaughter, it is not necessary to prove the person was negligent in causing the death of another, nor that they unlawfully used the substance that intoxicated them, but only that they were intoxicated, and operated a motor vehicle, and someone died as a result. The same principle of strict liability applies in New York for vehicular manslaughter in the second degree.
Assisted suicide
In some U.S. states, assisted suicide is punishable as manslaughter, while others classify it as an independent criminal offense or as a form of murder.
Terminology
As each state has its own statutes, law that cover the same criminal conduct may have different names. For example:
New York State defines manslaughter in the first degree as conduct that causes a death with intent to cause serious physical injury, a definition that corresponds to "voluntary manslaughter" in most other states. If the defendant's intent was to cause death, the charge would be murder.
New York defines manslaughter in the second degree as a death that occurs without intent to cause serious physical injury, but where reckless conduct by the defendant resulted in death. This corresponds to "involuntary manslaughter" in most other states.
