Premeditation

Every day we hear about the occurrence of a new crime. This crime may be intentional or unintentional, as this is determined by reference to the circumstances and causes of each crime. It should be noted that persistence and stalking are two separate circumstances from each other, so a premeditated circumstance can occur without being It is accompanied by stalking, but the circumstance of stalking can only come with premeditation.

Premeditation concept:

Premeditation: It is a circumstance of a personal nature in the sense that it does not extend to the partners in the crime, and this circumstance requires the presence of the psychological element, while premeditation is considered a circumstance of an objective nature in the sense that it extends to the partners in the crime, and this circumstance requires the presence of the spatial element.
Lurking: It means that the perpetrator stalks the victim until he commits his planned crime, as he prepares and prepares the necessary tools in advance before committing his crime.
premeditated elements:

The premeditated adverb is based on two main elements:

Psychological element: This element is considered the main pillar on which premeditation depends, and it means that the perpetrator thinks in advance to commit the crime, provided that he is in a state of calm and balance when planning it. If he was in a state of anger and recklessness, this element would fall.
The temporal element: The psychological element is linked to the temporal element until the circumstance of premeditation is complete. The temporal element means that a period of time passes that may be short or long depending on the circumstances (between the offender’s thinking of committing the crime and its execution). The availability of this element and its length or shortness are estimated based on Court discretion.
We point out that premeditation is achieved by preparing the means of the crime and preparing the execution plan, even if a mistake occurred in the person of the victim, and it is also achieved even if the criminal intent was limited or unlimited.

Is premeditation considered an aggravating circumstance?

To clarify this question, we can refer to “Judgment No. 1833 of 2020 AD - the Court of Cassation in its criminal capacity:

The Public Prosecution assigned the accused Khaled an aggravating circumstance (premeditated circumstance), and the court found that the jurisprudence of the Court of Cassation was based on the fact that in order for this aggravating circumstance to be premeditated for the crime of murder, two elements must be present in the perpetrator’s act, namely:

The psychological component, in that the offender had planned and thought about his crime while he was in a state of calm and deliberation, appreciating the consequences of his act.
The temporal element, which is the passage of a sufficient period of time between the intention to commit the crime and the execution thereof.
Important Note: Premeditation is a state of mind that exists in the same offender, and witnesses cannot be used to prove it. Rather, this is done through the court extracting external facts from the elements and circumstances of the case.

After examining the circumstances of the case, the court established that a quarrel occurred between a number of the complainant’s sons (S) and the son of the accused (R) that ended with the defendant’s son being beaten by the complainant’s sons. After the defendants (A + B) and the juvenile (C) knew that their brother ( R) had been beaten. They went in a state of anger within one to two hours, according to estimates, to the home of the victim (S) and his brother, and fired a barrage of bullets at them using the Kalashnikov rifles they had with them until the two of them died, then they burned the car of the complainant, the wife of the brother of the murdered.

The court found that the elements of psychological and temporal killing do not exist in the actions of the accused (a), but the criminal intent for him was not prior, but rather was immediate because his brother was beaten, and with regard to the existence of previous disputes, the court proved that although all parties live in The same town, but the disputes between them did not reach the point of thinking about killing, as the Public Prosecution office did not provide any evidence of the existence of previous disputes between them, and as a result, it can be said that the two elements of murder (the psychological and temporal element) have been achieved, and therefore the description of the accused (a) must be modified in The case ranges from the felony of premeditated murder with participation, in violation of the provisions of Articles (328/76) of the Jordanian Penal Code, repeated twice, to the felony of premeditated murder involving more than one victim in association, in violation of the provisions of Articles (327/3 and 76) of the Jordanian Penal Code.

** Premeditation is considered an aggravating circumstance in murders and all intentional assaults that cause harm to the human body in general.

Examples of premeditation:

An accused person was convicted of committing murder by deliberately strangling a victim with a lamp cord, as evidence showed that the perpetrator had re-placed the rope several times around the victim’s neck, so that each time he re-acted he was able to think about his actions and the same thing during his struggle with the victim before suffocation All of the above proves the existence of a premeditated circumstance in this crime.
Mark Richardson was convicted of killing his wife, Cindy Cliff, after he had planned to kill her for three years from the time they got married, and after investigating the circumstances of the crime, it was found that Mark had committed premeditated murder, and the court sentenced him to life imprisonment - this was the first Premeditated murder in 1963 AD.