Can You Get Charged for Killing Someone Who's Already Dead

[FaxBook]

My question involves criminal law for the state of: New York. I was wondering if you planned to commit a murder of someone, and you planned on sneaking into their bed while they slept and shooting them, however, during that night before you got there they had lets say a heart attack and died. Then hours later you show up and you sneak in, think they are sleeping and shoot them in the head. Then lets say you either get caught or maybe you turn yourself in because of guilt, whatever. The autopsy confirms however the cause of death was from natural causes. Would this clear you of murder, or would your intent to kill be incriminating enough for at least a minor sentence. Or would you be sentenced with something like desecrating a corpse or something like that. I have no law experience I was just curious.

[L-1]

Having entered with the intent to commit as crime, you would have committed burglary. The specific degree of burglary would depend on a number of circumstances you have not mentioned such as type of dwelling, whether you were armed and if so, what type of weapon you were carrying.

Read article 140 of the Penal Law here for further http://ypdcrime.com/penal.law/article140.htm

[Mr. Knowitall]

While factual impossibility is a defense to homicide, it is generally not a defense to attempted murder -- that is, some courts have held that fact that you mistakenly believe a person to be alive when they are dead does not change the fact that you intended to commit a murder and committed the acts necessary to carry out that intent. Also, prosecutors would be able to layer on serious charges such as burgarly/home invasion, felony firearm, and the like. Attempted murder is a charge that carries a significant penalty, often including a possible life sentence. In New York the penalty range for attempted first degree murder appears to be 20 - 40 years.

New York addresses the impossibility defense for attempted crimes by statute:

If the conduct in which a person engages otherwise constitutes an attempt to commit a crime pursuant to section 110.00, it is no defense to a prosecution for such attempt that the crime charged to have been attempted was, under the attendant circumstances, factually or legally impossible of commission, if such crime could have been committed had the attendant circumstances been as such person believed them to be.

[Disagreeable]

Don't forget attempted homicide might stick.

[FaxBook]

Ok so lets say you live in the house, lets say its your husband. So you're not breaking and entering. Its your husband he's annoying you want to kill him, and you kill him by smothering him with a pillow, so no weapon, no real damage done to his corpse. You get caught somehow, you confess to smothering him with a pillow with a pillow, then its later found out he died earlier that day of a heart attack hours before you could have done anything. But in your mind, somehow, you felt like you killed him and you had intent to kill him. You're saying it would mostly be attempted homicide. Which could still get you like 20-40 years.

[Who'sThatGuy]

Ok so lets say you live in the house, lets say its your husband. So you're not breaking and entering. Its your husband he's annoying you want to kill him, and you kill him by smothering him with a pillow, so no weapon, no real damage done to his corpse. You get caught somehow, you confess to smothering him with a pillow with a pillow, then its later found out he died earlier that day of a heart attack hours before you could have done anything. But in your mind, somehow, you felt like you killed him and you had intent to kill him. You're saying it would mostly be attempted homicide. Which could still get you like 20-40 years.

You can't smother a corpse with a pillow. Try again.

[JulesJam]

New York addresses the impossibility defense for attempted crimes by statute:

I think the issue is would you have met all of the elements of the crime of attempted murder. If the attempted murder statute includes language such as attempt to murder a person, then you have to look at how person is defined to see if a dead body would qualify as a person.

If a dead body is not considered a person, well, you could get the charges dismissed because the prosecutor can't prove all elements of the crime. You wouldn't need to mount an impossibility defense.

[Mr. Knowitall]

You can't smother a corpse with a pillow. Try again.

You also can't smother somebody with a typical pillow. Put one over your face and see for yourself. (Maybe a memory foam pillow might be dense enough?)

[budwad]

May I ask what you members are doing? Are you going to be accessories to a crime? This is a hypo about a murder and I thought we don't deal in hypos?

[Dogmatique]

I have on hand 15 or 16 text books relating to pathology, the medicolegal and social issue surrounding death and at least two on how explaining how to read an ECG (mind-numbing - trust me) was to me and I've spent time with some of the the best and some of the words.

Um....somebody's knocking at the door...