Court Opinion

ID: 9758547
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 23:35:38.774999+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:52.793184
License: Public Domain

ROBERTS, Justice,
concurring.
Although voluntary manslaughter is usually committed with an intent to kill, it is at least theoretically possible that it may be committed with an intent to do serious bodily injury or if the defendant has been extremely reckless. W. LaFave & A. Scott, Criminal Law § 76 (1972). As with intentional killings, killings committed with an intent to do serious bodily injury or with that degree of recklessness which would otherwise constitute a “depraved heart” killing may be reduced from murder to voluntary manslaughter by the presence of mitigating circumstances. Id. It is clear, however, appellant’s requested charge that voluntary manslaughter requires an intent to kill was sufficient to alert the court to the failure of the general charge to alert the jury that in order to constitute voluntary manslaughter a killing must be committed with a state of mind which, absent mitigating circumstances, would constitute malice. Therefore, I join the majority.