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Comment by sandworm | Hacker News Reader

Lol. When I was at school this tactic, creating doubt by blaming someone else, was called "Plan B" after a plot line from the TV series The Practice.

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It's almost a requirement in a criminal defense case to have an alternative culprit, just the same way that it's almost required to have a motive and a weapon in a homicide case. The defense needs to raise a reasonable doubt that Ulbriicht wasn't the criminal and that's best done by presenting an alternative culprit.

There are no "homicide cases" in court. That might be term used by some cops to indicate a case involving a body, but even then it is ambiguous as cops often don't know whether the body was "killed" or whether they killed themselves. Homicide just means a killing by someone else (suicide is not homicide). State execution is also considered homicide even though there is no chargeable crime.

Actual crimes from homicide range from the various types of murder, manslaughter, felony-murder, Misdemeanor-manslaughter, negligence causing death, vehicular manslaughter ... and others I cannot remember off the top of my head.

I agree that weapons are a good thing to have but are far from necessary, especially when there aren't any (murder through neglect). Motives are equally unnecessary. Google "one-punch murder". You don't need a motive to be guilty, unless by motive you mean "mens rea", a very different concept.

> Motives are equally unnecessary.

Really? Wasn't a motive one of the things keeping murder and manslaughter apart? (IANAL.)

Intent (or "mens rea"), not motive. Some killers don't have a motive; see the Louisiana murderer who confessed to killing a child who came to his door to sell candy -- he confessed, saying only that he "had a bad day." Motives are used to explain why the accused might have done something, but aren't necessary for the legal definition of a crime.

In some cases, murder does not require mens rea, when the accused shows "extreme indifference to the value of human life" (e.g, "depraved heart" manslaughter). The classic legal example is someone who sits at the top of a skyscraper idly tossing bricks off the side; they might not intend to kill someone, but their callous and wanton disregard for human life means that in most jurisdictions they're going down for murder.

Murder always requires mens rea. Crimes that do not require mens rea are called "strict liability crimes" but murder is definitely never one of those.

>In some cases, murder does not require mens rea, when the accused shows "extreme indifference to the value of human life"

In such a case, the extreme indifference IS the mens rea. The prosecution must prove the existence of that extreme indifference. Murder without mens rea would mean that the prosecution wouldn't need to even discuss indifference.

"Voluntary manslaughter" is a killing that would otherwise be murder, but because of a recognized mitigating factor is punished as something less. It has all the elements of murder (killing with aforethought) but we choose not to punish it as such. For instance: The killing was provoked.

"Involuntary manslaughter" is a totally different thing in that there is no malice aforethought. Usually these are cased of responsible people failing to act, such as a life guard watching someone drown who they should save.

Neither requires a motive, nor does murder.

I would expect that a lifeguard watching someone drown would qualify as depraved indifference and would be tried as second-degree murder (in most US jurisdictions).

It worked for Casey Anthony

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