Mr. Welch Case

The purpose of this essay is to review and analyze a case of criminal law to make a determination of the possible homicide offense(s) that the defendant may be charged with. The case at hand is dealing with an estranged husband, Mr. William Welch, who gets into a verbal altercation with his wife, Mrs. Renee Welch, and her friend, Mr. Ben Powers. This verbal altercation starts with the verbal altercation and later leads to Mr. Welch shooting and killing Mr. Powers. At the trial, Mr. Welch claims that the killing was an act of self-defense, but the jury does not agree and finds him guilty of a homicide offense. The job at hand today is to break this case down into the facts, issue, and rules to properly analyze and conclude what offense(s) Mr.
First, we will look further into the accused, Mr. Welch, and his actions regarding the charges of premeditated murder. To begin, we will look at the elements of premeditated murder. A person, Mr. Powers, is in fact dead and this came about from the actions of Mr. Welch who performed the act of shooting Mr. Powers three times. This killing was unlawful with the known facts that Mr. Welch was not acting in self-defense, but in a state of fury towards the victim. To conclude the elements for premeditated murder, we have reason to believe that the accused had a premeditated design to kill; the evidence that stands behind this claim begins with the accused acquiring his weapon, .380 caliber semiautomatic pistol, upon returning home from his altercation with the victim. The short amount of time between the incidents brought forward also gives reason to believe that Mr. Welch acted with the intention to kill; there was a seven minute time interval between the time that Mr. Welch left the altercation to when he returned with his loaded weapon. It is inferred that there was a deliberately formed purpose to kill, and as stated in Article 118 of the UCMJ, “it is immaterial how soon afterwards it is put to action.”( Law for Air Force Officers Cases and Materials, IV-62) Now we must consider the option of the conviction voluntary manslaughter, and again, we will dissect the elements with regards to the facts brought forward. As stated earlier Mr. Powers was in fact found dead at the scene and the death resulted from the act of the accused, who fired three shots from his weapon, leaving the victim dead within two minutes. The killing was unlawful with the reason to be that it was not an act of self-defense or defense of any other individuals. Finally, at the time of the killing, the accused proved that he had