Vehicular homicide isn’t enough information to figure out if it’s murder. All we know from that label is one person killed another person with a vehicle. It could be entirely accidental, or there could be criminal negligence, or there could have been a real intent to kill another person without justification or excuse. If there is an absence of intent to kill a person without justification or excuse, you don’t have enough for murder. Manslaughter comes up for the criminal negligence, where you drove under such conditions that you just didn’t care. That gets you much closer to murder, but not quite over the line. And you can still be punished for criminal negligence.
But words have meaning. In legalese, if you don’t have the right kind of intent, you don’t get murder. This is not new, BTW. It’s been like this for centuries. Nobody should be surprised by any of this, least of all Chris Matthews, who to me is just trying to show up prolifers as inconsistent and uncompassionate, so he doesn’t really care about the technical requirements of murder, and he probably knows he can buffalo most of his audience because they sure don’t know.
Peace,
SR
Unless you are a suicide driver. No drunk intends to run over anyone and negligence does not prove intent either, just negligence. Semantics the bane of justice.