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95 Nev. 251

592 P.2d 950

Ramos v. State

Nevada Supreme Court

Decided April 6, 1979

Nevada Supreme Court · decided 1979-04-06

Applies NV 200 § 200.030

Relies on 62 Ill. 2d 568 - People v. Viser · Stephens v. Sheriff, Clark County

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1979-04-06

How this case has been cited

Cited by 17 later decisions — most recently December 2013

17 state decisions

6019791980199020002010decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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¶1 OPINION

Per Curiam:

¶2 After a domestic quarrel with the victim, appellant followed her to her place of employment and shot her in the chest at point blank range. The victim survived and appellant was indicted for attempted murder, tried by a jury and convicted of attempted murder in the second degree. NRS 200.030; NRS 208.070. Appellant contends that his conviction is fatally defective because the trial court gave an erroneous jury instruction. We agree.

¶3 The defective instruction reads in pertinent part: “Attempted Murder in the Second Degree occurs when the Defendant committed [sic] an act which evidences an abandoned and malignant heart and yet did not premeditate and did not intend to kill” (emphasis added). The instruction is a misstatement of the law. An attempt requires that an act be done *253 with intent to commit a crime. NRS 208.070; Stephens v. Sheriff, 93 Nev. 338, 565 P.2d 1007 (1977).

¶4 The last paragraph of the erroneous instruction tells the jury that the appellant may be found guilty of attempting to murder the victim if they believe that he merely committed an aggravated battery upon her. In People v. Viser, 343 N.E.2d 903, 910 (Ill. 1975), it was pointed out that, “[t]here is no such criminal offense as an attempt to achieve an unintended result”. It was error to instruct the jury that the defendant could be found guilty of attempted murder in the second degree in the absence of an intent to kill.

¶5 This case is remanded to the district court with instructions to vacate the judgment of conviction of attempted second degree murder and grant appellant a new trial.

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