Plain language law

New Zealand law explained for everyone

Crimes Act 1961

Crimes against the person - Murder, manslaughter, etc

167: Murder defined

You could also call this:

“Murder is when someone purposely kills another person or causes severe harm that leads to death, even if by accident or for another reason.”

Murder is a type of culpable homicide. You commit murder if you do any of these things:

You mean to cause someone to die and you kill them.

You mean to cause a bodily injury to someone that you know could likely kill them, and you don’t care whether they die or not. If you do this and the person dies, it’s murder.

You mean to kill someone or cause them a serious injury as described above, but by accident or mistake, you kill someone else instead. Even though you didn’t mean to hurt the person who died, it’s still murder.

You do something for an illegal reason, knowing it could likely cause death. If someone dies because of your action, it’s murder, even if you hoped to achieve your illegal goal without hurting anyone.

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View the original legislation for this page at https://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1986/0120/latest/link.aspx?id=DLM329311.

Topics:
Crime and justice > Criminal law
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166: Causing injury the treatment of which causes death, or

“If you hurt someone badly and they die because of how they were treated for that injury, it's still considered killing them.”

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168: Further definition of murder, or

“Murder includes causing serious harm or stopping someone's breathing to help commit other serious crimes”

Part 8 Crimes against the person
Murder, manslaughter, etc

167Murder defined

  1. Culpable homicide is murder in each of the following cases:

  2. if the offender means to cause the death of the person killed:
    1. if the offender means to cause to the person killed any bodily injury that is known to the offender to be likely to cause death, and is reckless whether death ensues or not:
      1. if the offender means to cause death, or, being so reckless as aforesaid, means to cause such bodily injury as aforesaid to one person, and by accident or mistake kills another person, though he or she does not mean to hurt the person killed:
        1. if the offender for any unlawful object does an act that he or she knows to be likely to cause death, and thereby kills any person, though he or she may have desired that his or her object should be effected without hurting any one.

          Compare
          • 1908 No 32 s 182