18 U.S.C. § 1111 — Murder

(a) Murder is the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought. That means it was done on purpose, with an evil intent, not by accident. The law calls it "first degree" murder if it fits certain categories. It is first degree if someone kills by poison or by lying in wait. It is also first degree if the killing is willful, deliberate, malicious, and premeditated, meaning planned out ahead of time. Killing someone while committing certain other serious crimes is also first degree murder. Those crimes include arson, escape, murder, kidnapping, treason, espionage, and sabotage. They also include aggravated sexual abuse, sexual abuse, child abuse, burglary, or robbery. A pattern of assault or torture against a child or children that leads to death also counts as first degree. So does killing one person while trying to kill someone else, if the plan was premeditated. Any other murder is murder in the second degree. (b) This subsection applies within the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States. That covers places like federal enclaves, ships, and similar areas. Someone guilty of first degree murder can be punished by death or by life in prison. Someone guilty of second degree murder can be imprisoned for any number of years, or for life. (c) This subsection defines terms used in the section. "Assault" means the same thing it means in section 113. A "child" is someone under 18. The child must be under the killer's care or control, or at least six years younger. "Child abuse" means causing a child's death or serious bodily injury on purpose or knowingly. A "pattern or practice of assault or torture" means it happened on at least two occasions. "Serious bodily injury" has the meaning given in section 1365. "Torture" means conduct that meets the definition in section 2340(1). This applies whether or not a government official did it.

The record shows that this section was enacted on June 25, 1948, as chapter 645 of that year's session laws (62 Stat. 756), part of the broader 1948 recodification and revision of the federal criminal code found in Title 18. The source credit further establishes that the section has been amended six times since then: by Public Law 98–473 (1984), Public Law 99–646 (1986), Public Law 99–654 (1986), Public Law 100–690 (1988), Public Law 103–322 (1994), and Public Law 108–21 (2003). Each amendment altered or added to the statutory text, though the source credit does not itself detail the substance of each change. The 1948 enactment is generally understood to be part of a large-scale effort by Congress to consolidate, clarify, and modernize the federal criminal statutes, many of which had accumulated piecemeal since the nation's founding. That broader revision is commonly described as an exercise in codification rather than the creation of new policy, aiming to organize existing federal crimes—including homicide offenses committed within federal jurisdiction—into a single, more coherent title. The specific reasons Congress structured the degrees of murder, the listed predicate felonies, or later amendments (such as the addition of child-abuse and torture definitions) as it did are not established by the record provided here. Determining the precise legislative intent behind each subsequent amendment would require consulting the individual public laws and their accompanying legislative history, which are not detailed in the source credit itself.