http://criminal.findlaw.com/crimes/a-z/murder_second_degree.html The premeditation, I gather, is what separates first and second degrees.
So, I'm not going to defend any asshole who frackin' beheads anybody, but... we don't know very much about the case other than his wife was beheaded, and he's been charged with the crime. I'd hold off on making any religious connection until we hear more - after all, Muslims hardly have the "grisly murder" market cornered. (See Yates, Andrea - who I would hardly consider representative of Christianity. Hell, in 2005 a priest in Romania crucified a woman, who died of asphyxiation after three days.)
A guy on another board I post on is a prosecutor in NY state; he said that it's very rare for people to be charged with 1st-degree murder there because the way the statute is written supposedly somehow biases jurors towards the death penalty if a guilty verdict is found. Basically it's used for cop killers, people that kill while committing a robbery, torture killings (which could end up applying here), etc. Not sure how reliable that is but apparently in NY a lot of crimes that would be 1st-degree elsewhere are charged as 2nd-degree, because the criminal can still be sentenced to life without parole. Doubt premeditation would be the issue, as beheading by its very nature is a method of murder that almost always requires at least some premeditation. Unless you're out chopping firewood or something, people don't generally have any tools capable of beheading someone close at hand.
In the town where I grew up, a Catholic doctor killed his wife, chopped her up, and buried her in the back yard. I went to school with a couple of his kids. Yes, it ********ed them up pretty seriously.
To play devil's advocate (IANAL) here, lack of premeditation doesn't mean he unknowingly killed his wife or he did it in a fit of passion (otherwise, it would've been 3rd degree or manslaughter). 2nd degree is still very very very very serious.
The couple that are the subject of this thread had been going through a divorce. The police were also called to deal with several domestic disturbances.
How do you get from "I think I'll kill my wife" to "and I'll do it by beheading her"? Husbands and wives kill each other every single day. But rarely does domestic murder involve beheading.
Maybe it's a cultural thing, or maybe he's just a sick ********. <shrug> Here's more on the story, and it addresses some of the issues people are dancing around on this thread. I think this part is particularly relevant: Nadia Shahram, a matrimonial lawyer in Williamsville, said that some Muslim men consider divorce a dishonor on their family. A teacher of family law and Islam at the University at Buffalo Law School, Shahram said that “fanatical” Muslims believe “honor killing” is justified for bringing dishonor on a family. While it has not been determined whether Aasiya Hassan’s death had anything to do with fanatical beliefs, the community should address the attitudes that make divorce particularly difficult for many Muslim families, Shahram said. “I have not had one [case] where the husband wanted to settle outside of the court system,” she said. In some interpretations, the Quran allows husbands to punish “disobedient” women, Shahram said, adding that this is a minority view.
I saw in USA Today couple weekends ago that a Male Chineese student at Virginia Tech of all places. Meet a Female Chineese student through Foriegn Exchange program on campus. Well I guess the guy tried to Mind F her and get her response so he could marry her. Or something less than what he did. Well unexpectedly They meet for lunch or something and he beheaded her on campus with a knife. I never got confirmation if thats true but there are virginians here which might chime in.
It was on the news, even over here. I think it kinda got more attention because of the VT massacre, the fact that it happened at the same place. Still a very messed up story as well.
Your starting the thread is a comment, Alex. What we have here is a guy whose day job was working to counter anti-Muslim stereotypes, and then goes about the business of committing an act that, for some people, falls squarely into the stereotype. In the case of the victim, a sad thing indeed. In the case of "who/how"? Big whoop. 1) She'd be just as dead if he'd shot her or poisoned her or strangled her or hit her with a big stick, so the beheading in and of itself is only a more grisly end. 2) If your post was about saying one thing and doing something entirely different, we need look no further than Larry Craig for guidance on that. Not sure why the method is getting so much attention, unless it's to cast stones at the culture itself. I mean, sure, if I'm going to die, I want it to be quick and painless, but really... WTF difference does it make after a few seconds?
What, you thought he was making some sort of statement by putting "head" in quotes and bolding a sentence? Have you no faith in fellow man?!?!?!?! That, or some people are voyeuristicor desperate to make a cheap joke? Or all of the above?
Beheading is not necessarily quick and painless as evidenced by Phillip Berg and others. Short of using a samurai sword that could guilliltine the head in one shot, most of these beheadings involve a lot of cutting. I remember in Berg's case and others videos, you could hear the screaming of the victim for longer than 5-6 seconds. You could even hear the struggle to breathe even after the majority of the neck had been severed open. Beheading someone is brutal. This guy is sick and the irony should not lost. So much for a moderate world view.
"So I'm in a bar, and I go up to a woman. I notice she has a black eye. I think 'Great, she doesn't listen.'" - Dave Attell
Yeah. Do yourself a favor and don't ever watch those videos. I watched the Daniel Pearl video (the reporter in Pakistan) and it was pretty disturbing, but nothing earth-shattering, at least in the version of it I saw--they basically showed a guy holding the sword up to his neck, cut away to some guy screaming in Arabic for a few seconds, then panned back to the first guy holding up his severed head. Like I said, disturbing, but I didn't really lose any sleep over it so I thought it'd be OK to watch the Berg video--big mistake. They actually showed them sawing his head off (took a good 10 seconds), which was 1000X worse than the other ones.
The Berg video he used a machete and he did not make a clean cut so he had to spend some effort cutting through the tissue and all the while Berg was still alive. That was disturbing so was the one of the other journalist I believe where you could hear the attempts to breathe with gurgling no doubt blood flowing down the airway, while the terrorist was having a similarly difficult time cutting through the head. Totally and completely disgusting.