Opinion ID: 118183
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: First degree murder is the killing of a human being:

Text: (1) When the offender has specific intent to kill or to inflict great bodily harm and is engaged in the perpetration or attempted perpetration of aggravated kidnapping, second degree kidnapping, aggravated escape, aggravated arson, aggravated rape, forcible rape, aggravated burglary, armed robbery, drive-by shooting, first degree robbery, or simple robbery. (2) When the offender has a specific intent to kill or to inflict great bodily harm upon a fireman or peace officer engaged in the performance of his lawful duties; (3) When the offender has a specific intent to kill or to inflict great bodily harm upon more than one person; or (4) When the offender has specific intent to kill or inflict great bodily harm and has offered, has been offered, has given, or has received anything of value for the killing. (5) When the offender has the specific intent to kill or to inflict great bodily harm upon a victim under the age of twelve or sixty-five years of age or older. (6) When the offender has the specific intent to kill or to inflict great bodily harm while engaged in the distribution, exchange, sale, or purchase, or any attempt thereof, of a controlled dangerous substance listed in Schedules I, II, III, IV, or V of the Uniform Controlled Dangerous Substances Law. (7) When the offender has specific intent to kill and is engaged in the activities prohibited by R. S. 14:107.1(C)(1). . . . . . C. Whoever commits the crime of first degree murder shall be punished by death or life imprisonment at hard labor without benefit of parole, probation, or suspension of sentence in accordance with the determination of the jury. La. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 14:30 (West 1986 and Supp. 1997) (emphasis added). This statute says that murder in the first degree shall be punished by death or life imprisonment without parole. It defines first-degree murder as the killing of a human being with a specific intent to kill or to inflict great bodily harm where the offender is committing certain other felonies or has been paid for the crime or kills more than one victim, or kills a fireman, a peace officer, someone over the age of 64, or someone under the age of 12. In this case, the jury found that the defendant killed a child under the age of 12 with a specific intent to kill or to inflict great bodily harm upon that child. In deciding whether the ACA assimilates Louisiana's law, we first ask whether the defendant's act or omission is made punishable by any enactment of Congress. 18 U. S. C. § 13(a) (emphasis added); see supra, at 164. The answer to this question is yes. An enactment of Congress, namely, § 1111, makes the defendant's act . . . punishable as second-degree murder. This answer is not conclusive, however, for reasons we have pointed out. Rather, we must ask a second question. See supra, at 164-165. Does applicable federal law indicate an intent to punish conduct such as the defendant's to the exclusion of the particular state statute at issue? We concede at the outset the Government's claim that the two statutes cover different forms of behavior. The federal second-degree murder statute covers a wide range of conduct; the Louisiana first-degree murder provision focuses upon a narrower (and different) range of conduct. We also concede that, other things being equal, this consideration argues in favor of assimilation. Yet other things are not equal; and other features of the federal statute convince us that Congress has intended that the federal murder statute preclude application of a first-degree murder statute such as Louisiana's to a killing on a federal enclave. The most obvious such feature is the detailed manner in which the federal murder statute is drafted. It purports to make criminal a particular form of wrongful behavior, namely, murder, which it defines as the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought. It covers all variants of murder. It divides murderous behavior into two parts: a specifically defined list of first-degree murders and all other murders, which it labels second-degree. This fact, the way in which first-degree and second-degree provisions are linguistically interwoven; the fact that the first-degree list is detailed; and the fact that the list sets forth several circumstances at the same level of generality as does Louisiana's statute, taken together, indicate that Congress intended its statute to cover a particular field namely, unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethoughtas an integrated whole. The complete coverage of the federal statute over all types of federal enclave murder is reinforced by the extreme breadth of the possible sentences, ranging all the way from any term of years, to death. There is no gap for Louisiana's statute to fill. Several other circumstances offer support for the conclusion that Congress' omissions from its first-degree murder list reflect a considered legislative judgment. Congress, for example, has recently focused directly several times upon the content of the first-degree list, subtracting certain specified circumstances or adding others. See Pub. L. 99-646, 100 Stat. 3623 (substituting aggravated sexual abuse or sexual abuse for rape); Pub. L. 98-473, 98 Stat. 2138 (adding escape, murder, kidnaping, treason, espionage, and sabotage to first-degree list). By drawing the line between first and second degree, Congress also has carefully decided just when it does, and when it does not, intend for murder to be punishable by deatha major way in which the Louisiana first-degree murder statute (which provides the death penalty) differs from the federal second-degree provision (which does not). 18 U. S. C. § 1111(b); La. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 14:30(C) (West Supp. 1997). The death penalty is a matter that typically draws specific congressional attention. See, e. g., Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, Pub. L. 103-322, § 60003, 108 Stat. 1968 (section entitled Specific Offenses For Which [the] Death Penalty Is Authorized). As this Court said in Williams, [w]here offenses have been specifically defined by Congress and the public has been guided by such definitions for many years, it is unusual for Congress through general legislation like the ACA to amend such definitions or the punishments prescribed for such offenses, without making clear its intent to do so. 327 U. S., at 718 (footnote omitted). Further, Congress when writing and amending the ACA has referred to the conduct at issue heremurderas an example of a crime covered by, not as an example of a gap in, federal law. See H. R. Rep. No. 1584, 76th Cong., 3d Sess., 1 (1940) (Certain of the major crimes . . . such . . . as murder are expressly defined by Congress; assimilation of state law is proper as to other offenses); 1 Cong. Deb. 338 (1825) (Daniel Webster explaining original assimilation provision as a way to cover the residue of crimes not provide[d] for by Congress; at the time federal law contained a federal enclave murder provision, see 1 Stat. 113); see also United States v. Sharpnack, 355 U. S., at 289, and n. 5 (citing 18 U. S. C. § 1111 for proposition that Congress has increasingly enact[ed] for the enclaves specific criminal statutes and to that extent, [has] excluded the state laws from that field). Finally, the federal criminal statute before us applies only on federal enclaves. § 1111(b). Hence, there is a sense in which assimilation of Louisiana law would treat those living on federal enclaves differently from those living elsewhere in Louisiana, for it would subject them to two sets of territorial criminal laws in addition to the general federal criminal laws that apply nationwide. See supra, at 163. Given all these considerations, it is perhaps not surprising that we have been unable to find a single reported case in which a federal court has used the ACA to assimilate a state murder law to fill a supposed gap in the federal murder statute. The Government, arguing to the contrary, says that Louisiana's provision is a type of child protection statute, filling a gap in federal enclave-related criminal law due to the fact that Congress left child abuse, like much other domestic relations law, to the States. See Brief for United States 23, 29-30. The fact that Congress, when writing various criminal statutes, has focused directly upon child protection weakens the force of this argument. See, e. g., 21 U. S. C. §§ 859(a)(b) (person selling drugs to minors is subject to twice the maximum sentence as one who deals to adults, and repeat offenders who sell to children subject to three times the normal maximum); 18 U. S. C. § 1201(g) (special rule for kidnaping offenses involving minors, with enhanced penalties in certain cases); §§ 2241(c) and 2243 (prohibiting sexual abuse of minors); § 2251 (prohibiting sexual exploitation of children); § 2251A (selling and buying of children); § 2258 (failure to report child abuse). And, without expressing any view on the merits of lower court cases that have assimilated state child abuse statutes despite the presence of a federal assault law, § 113, see, e. g., United States v. Brown, 608 F. 2d, at 553-554; United States v. Fesler, 781 F. 2d 384, 390-391 (CA5 1986), we note that the federal assault prohibition is less comprehensive than the federal murder statute, and the relevant statutory relationships are less direct than those at issue here. We conclude that the consideration to which the Government points is not strong enough to open a child-related gap in the comprehensive effort to define murder on federal enclaves. For these reasons we agree with the Fifth Circuit that federal law does not assimilate the child victim provision of Louisiana's first-degree murder statute.