Smith was charged with two counts of *second-degree murder* in the deaths of...

"I want him dead," the complaint quoted Smith telling an investigator.

Smith said he dragged Brady's body into his basement workshop, then sat back down on his chair, and after a few minutes Kifer began coming down the stairs. He said he shot her as soon as her hips appeared, and she fell down the steps.

Smith said he tried to shoot her again with his Mini 14 rifle, but that the gun jammed and Kifer laughed at him.

"Smith stated that it was not a very long laugh because she was already hurting," according to the complaint.

Smith said he then shot Kifer in the chest several times with a .22-caliber revolver, dragged her next to Brady, and with her still gasping for air, fired a shot under her chin "up into the cranium."

"Smith described it as 'a good clean finishing shot,'" according to the compliant, but also that he acknowledged he had fired "more shots than (he) needed to."

What kind of idiot goes down into a basement unarmed after hearing someone get shot twice?

This is the part I don't get

What kind of idiot goes down into a basement unarmed after hearing someone get shot twice?

Killing by meaning to kill, like I shoot you in the head at point blank ?

Accidental is when the person wasn't meaning to inflict harm in the 1st place, 1st degree from what I am aware doesn't require pre-meditation, rape victims as an example.

- I think ?

It doesn't matter whether they meant to inflict harm or not, what matters is the recklessness of their actions. If I were to start doing burnouts in a car in the middle of a park while a school carnival was going on and I ran over and killed a child, I wouldn't be charged with first or second degree murder because I had no intention, be it premeditated or not, of killing the child. But I would be guilty of manslaughter because I should have been aware that my reckless actions carried a substantial chance of killing someone due to the circumstances of the event, regardless of whether it was an accident or not.

Well the pre meditation only requires enough time to of passed to have thought about the situation and acted with the intent to kill anyway.

Well aye, I meant if you kill someone through actions when you wasn't expecting the outcome, like a 3rd party in a shoot out, with accidental and manslaughter having a closer resemblance to eachother like 1st to 2nd degree ?

It can be inside the house after he found them, if you can argue enough time had passed and he acted with the intent to kill after he had time to access and act upon a situation.

The gun jamming should have given him plenty of breathing room to consider his actions, let alone dragging her down to the basement and finishing her off ?

I'm not entirely sure what you're asking. But where manslaughter is concerned it depends whether a "reasonable person" should have had the foresight to realise what they were doing could cause someone's death. If you lived alone on a 10000 acre farm and decided to go shooting wabbits and from a mile away accidentally shot and killed some vagrant who, unknown to you, was trespassing on your land then it would be very difficult to prove manslaughter. If you lived in a block of units and decided to use your bedroom wall for target practice and a bullet went through the wall and killed your neighbour while they were watching TV then it would be quite easy to prove manslaughter.

An argument can always be made, sure. It's never black and white, that's why I use such extreme examples. From what little information we have from this article though it does seem like second degree to me.

I'll wait for sys0p and Nightshade to come down into this thread and argue how this is a completely sane course of action to take if someone enters your house.