You're actually somewhat wrong:

Manslaughter/"Totschlag" also requires intention (because anything without intention is, by definition, accidental or reckless).

Murder/"Mord" additionally requires one of several distinct characteristics. Among them are the attempt to conceal some other crime, a sexual motive, exploiting a victim's particularly weak ability to defend themselves, seeking financial gain, and maybe one or two more I forgot.

Yeah, that list is all over the place, and rather inconsistent. It will be changed any decade now.

Thanks for pointing that out. I always thought "Totschlag" also referred to violence that escalated into a killing but uninentionally so (i.e. when it should have been clear the injuries are fatal but they weren't meant to be).

Culturally and legally the US aggressively separates murder out from something that is only an accident. All deaths by accident definitely do not get referred to as murder or grouped under murder.

If you accidentally hit someone with a car for example (while not drunk etc), few would call it murder when referring to the event. It would be referred to as: he killed the person, or the person died by accident, or legally involuntary manslaughter if you're responsible for the death.

Speaking culturally, typically for people in the US to call something murder, it almost always requires intent or high negligence.

The distinction I presume germany makes (because so do the Netherlands) is whether an intentional killing was premeditated (i.e. poisoning a spouse, or lying in ambush with a knife) or was conceived of in the heat of the moment (i.e. you insult my mother, I get so angry I grab a knife and stab you).

I think in America, this is the difference between murder in the first and second degree.

Germany has another (unique and different to the neighbours) distinction between "Mord" and "Totschlag" (both are translated to "murder" in my English version of the law). The former requires one additional criterion from a list to be fulfilled. These are dark motives (killing for killing's sake, sexual satisfaction, greed, hate, honour killings, or similar), reprehensible manner (treacherous, cruel, or with means dangerous to the public), and to facilitate or cover up another crime.

This distinction is pretty out of place in German criminal law but plans to change them move very slow.

Weird. So why did the comment single out premeditated murder?

Getting into a fight and unintentionally/recklessly causing lethal injuries, or unintentionally/recklessly causing a lethal accident to happen wouldn't then normally be called "murder" making the distinction unnecessary?

EDIT: To clarify, I'm not picking on coldtea. This isn't the first time I've seen people be corrected when using "murder" to refer to "first-degree murder".

I think the distinction is that if you plan to kill someone for months, then you wouldn't plan to do so on a submarine, as that would be a hard place to cover up the act.

If however, you're on a submarine and then decide to kill someone in a rage, then it's still murder, but it's not planned far in advance.

I guess "intentionally killing someone in a rage" didn't come to my mind. I can imagine planning to kill someone and then doing it or unintentionally killing someone in a fight/assault. But knowingly killing someone out of the blue never crossed my mind. Not sure what that says about me, if anything.

For starters, there's such a thing as justified homicide, i.e. Self-defense. Voluntary manslaughter covers the situation you describe, in which a suspect kills someone during a fight but can argue that he did not intend for the fight to become lethal. Such as punching someone who then falls and suffers a fatal head injury.

No, U.S. laws puts man-made killings, including murder and manslaughter and justified self-defense, under "homicide"

Homicide is generally a state-level crime in the US, and each state may have its own names and definitions for specific crimes.

No, murder requires premeditation under United States law. Even a heat-of-the-moment killing (e.g., someone pisses you off in a bar, you beat them, they die) may be prosecuted as manslaughter depending on circumstances; if the prosecution can establish that you intended your victim to die, it becomes a murder.

Below manslaughter, we have negligent homicide, which is when you cause an accident through negligence that kills someone. If you are driving recklessly and kill someone, this warrants the stiffer charge of "vehicular manslaughter" in some juristictions.

Note: IANAL, IANYL.

Yeah, I think that was what I was getting at. There's a difference between "I hate you so much, I'm going to kill you right now" and "I'm going to kill you dead, like, permanently". I'd think most people killing someone in the heat of the moment didn't really intend a permanent outcome even if the injuries were obviously life-altering/lethal.

Murder does not require premeditation in many variants of US Law.

Take a look at:

http://criminal.findlaw.com/criminal-charges/second-degree-m...