>Surely we can see that there's a bit of a difference between killing someone in the heat of the moment vs. using investigators to find them, lying in wait, and

>Surely we can see that there's a bit of a difference between killing someone in the heat of the moment vs. using investigators to find them, lying in wait, and then stabbing them to death in front of their children. Enough of a difference to matter in judgments of the behavior? For example, the entire 'heat of the moment' is the recognition that a person can be in a mental state where their actions are abnormal. In general we recognize this mindset lasts a short time (exactly how long is legally allowed and how long is socially allowed differs, but I can't think of any case that allows for more than an hour). But, in doing so, we have now acknowledged such mental states do exist and and given them some level of justification (enough so to be different than murder without the mental state). So, is it possible that a person who loses their spouse and children cannot be put into a similar long term mental state? If you read the wikipedia article, the man seemed to not have been in a normal mental state at all, to the point even the Switzerland courts recognized it after the murder. >On 8 November 2007, Kaloyev was released from prison, because his mental condition was not sufficiently considered in the initial sentence. So, while the mental states do have some difference (one lasting minutes to an hour, the other lasting years), they also seem to not be so different in the view of the courts. So is the difference enough to counter the other poster's comment? I don't think that has been established enough to dismiss their post outright.