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  • Murder is a very specific crime and applies to very few deaths
    Murder requires premeditation and the intent to kill a specific person.
    Hitting someone with a car, no matter how negligent or careless, is not murder.

    And further to Greenbank: prosecutors prefer to go with a charge more likely to result in conviction.

  • If the car is used as a weapon then it is fair to assume that the injuries caused would be serious or indeed fatal. So a murder charge could be brought, but you would have to prove intent to injure first. However a jury could still except the ‘ I hit the wrong pedal ‘ defence.

  • Murder requires premeditation and the intent to kill a specific person.

    None of those three assertions are true.

    You don't need premeditation - you can be having a row, punch someone or pick up a weapon and stab them with intent, and it's murder.

    You don't need to intend to kill - intending to injure them (at any rate to the GBH/really serious harm level) is enough.

    It doesn't need to be a specific person - set off a bomb intending to kill or injure, even though you have no idea who will be in the shopping centre or concert arena, and it's very definitely murder.

    Hitting someone with a car, no matter how negligent or careless, is not murder.

    And yet strangely the teenager in the Marcia Grant case was charged with murder, so it seems that the CPS disagrees with you

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