Attempted homicide is the crime of trying to kill another person and failing, whether because the intended victim survived, escaped, or was never touched at all. It is prosecuted as a serious felony in its own right, with federal law allowing up to twenty years in prison and many states authorizing life sentences for premeditated attempts. The charge does not require that the victim be injured. What matters is what the defendant intended and what the defendant did to carry that intent out.
You will hear “attempted homicide” and “attempted murder” used almost interchangeably in court. Some states write one term into their statutes and some write the other, but the legal elements are the same: a specific intent to kill combined with a concrete action toward the killing. Because attempted homicide is an inchoate crime, prosecuted for conduct aimed at a killing that never happened, the focus stays on the defendant’s state of mind and behavior rather than on the outcome.
The Two Things Prosecutors Must Prove
An attempted homicide conviction rests on two elements. Both have to be proven, and each is contested in almost every trial.
A Specific Intent to Kill
The prosecution has to show that the defendant’s actual goal was the victim’s death. This is a higher bar than most violent crimes require. Recklessness is not enough. Neither is an intent to injure, frighten, or warn. Those mental states support charges like aggravated assault or reckless endangerment but fall short of attempted murder.1Ninth Circuit District & Bankruptcy Courts. 16.5 Attempted Murder (18 USC 1113)
Intent is where these cases are usually won or lost. Defense attorneys argue their client meant only to hurt or scare the victim. Prosecutors build intent from circumstantial evidence: the type of weapon used, where on the body the defendant aimed, statements made before or after the act, and any prior expressions of a desire to kill. A jury has to weigh all of it together and decide whether the defendant was actually trying to end someone’s life.
A Substantial Step Toward the Killing
Intent alone will not convict. The defendant also has to have taken a substantial step toward carrying the killing out, which is what separates criminal liability from private thoughts and early planning.1Ninth Circuit District & Bankruptcy Courts. 16.5 Attempted Murder (18 USC 1113)
The line between preparation and a substantial step is one of the harder distinctions in criminal law. Buying a weapon or researching a victim’s schedule is generally preparation. Lying in wait outside the victim’s home with a loaded gun, luring the victim to a chosen location, or planting a bomb under their car qualifies as a substantial step even if the plan falls apart before anyone dies. The action has to strongly corroborate the intent to kill and show the defendant was moving from thinking to doing.
How It Differs From Aggravated Assault
The gap between attempted murder and aggravated assault confuses a lot of people, and it comes down almost entirely to intent. Aggravated assault typically requires a deadly weapon or serious bodily injury, but it does not require that the defendant was trying to kill anyone. Someone who wanted to hurt, threaten, or intimidate the victim without wanting them dead has committed assault, not attempted murder.
Two defendants can commit nearly identical acts and face different charges based on what the evidence reveals about state of mind. A single stab wound during a fight, followed by the defendant walking away, often supports aggravated assault. Repeated stabs with the defendant saying “I’m going to kill you” support attempted murder. The choice of charge often translates to decades of additional prison time, which is why prosecutors weigh weapon choice, wound location, the number of blows or shots, statements, and the relationship between the parties before filing.
Defenses That Can Defeat or Reduce the Charge
Because attempted homicide requires such a specific mental state, most defenses attack the prosecution’s proof of intent or justify what the defendant did.
Self-Defense
If the defendant reasonably believed they faced an immediate threat of death or serious bodily harm and used a proportionate level of force, self-defense is a complete defense and the charge fails. Imperfect self-defense applies when the defendant honestly believed they were in mortal danger but that belief was objectively unreasonable. It does not produce an acquittal, but it can reduce the charge to attempted voluntary manslaughter, which carries substantially lighter penalties.
Heat of Passion
An attempted killing committed in the heat of passion after adequate provocation can also be reduced to attempted voluntary manslaughter. The provocation has to be the kind that would push an ordinary person past rational judgment, the defendant has to have actually acted out of intense emotion, and not enough time can have passed for the defendant to cool off. Insults and hurt feelings do not qualify.
Abandonment
In jurisdictions that follow the Model Penal Code, a defendant who voluntarily and completely gave up the criminal effort before completing it may raise abandonment as an affirmative defense. The word that matters is “voluntarily.” Stopping because police sirens are approaching or because the plan suddenly seems too hard does not count. The defendant has to have genuinely changed their mind for moral reasons rather than practical ones.
Voluntary Intoxication
Because attempted murder is a specific intent crime, some jurisdictions allow evidence of voluntary intoxication to show the defendant was too impaired to form the intent to kill. Where it applies, it typically reduces the charge rather than producing an acquittal, and several states have narrowed or eliminated it by statute.
Impossibility Is Usually Not a Defense
Defendants sometimes argue that completing the killing was impossible: the victim had already left, the weapon was defective, the bed was empty. Courts have consistently rejected this. A person who intends to kill and takes concrete steps is guilty of attempt regardless of whether unknown facts made success impossible. Shooting into an empty bed intending to kill its occupant is still attempted murder.
Prison Time and Fines
Attempted homicide sits among the most serious felonies in every American criminal system. Sentences turn on whether the attempt was premeditated and on aggravating factors like weapon use.
Federal Sentences
Under federal law, attempted murder within federal jurisdiction carries a maximum of twenty years in prison, a fine, or both.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 1113 – Attempt to Commit Murder or Manslaughter If a firearm was involved, federal law adds mandatory consecutive time: at least five years for possessing a firearm during the crime, at least seven years for brandishing it, and at least ten years for discharging it. A second federal firearm offense carries a minimum of twenty-five years.3Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 924 – Penalties
State Sentences
State penalties vary but are often harsher than federal ones for the worst attempts. First-degree attempted murder, the premeditated and deliberate variety, commonly carries a potential life sentence with the possibility of parole. Second-degree attempted murder, which involves intent to kill without premeditation, typically produces fixed prison terms in the range of five to fifteen years before enhancements. Many states impose their own firearm enhancements that can add years or decades on top.
Fines vary by jurisdiction and generally run from nothing additional up to around $10,000, depending on the state and the degree of offense. Compared to the prison time, the fine is a minor piece of the punishment.
Life After a Conviction
The consequences of an attempted homicide conviction do not end when the prison sentence does. Federal law permanently bars anyone convicted of a crime punishable by more than one year in prison from possessing firearms or ammunition, and attempted murder clears that threshold with room to spare.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 922 – Unlawful Acts
Voting rights are restricted or eliminated in most states during a felony sentence, and restoration policies after release vary widely. Employment becomes much harder because background checks reveal the conviction and many employers will not hire applicants with violent felony records. Professional licenses in fields like healthcare, law, education, and finance are generally unavailable. For non-citizens, an attempted murder conviction is almost certainly an aggravated felony under immigration law, which triggers mandatory deportation with essentially no relief. Housing applications, loan eligibility, and personal relationships carry the weight of the record long after supervision ends.