Murder is the unlawful killing of a human being including, but not limited to, a human embryo or fetus, with malice aforethought or the intentional application of torture to a human being, which results in the death of a human being. Torture is the intentional infliction of extreme and prolonged pain with the intent to cause suffering. It shall also be torture to inflict on a human being extreme and prolonged acts of brutality irrespective of proof of intent to cause suffering. The death of a human being caused by such torture is murder irrespective of proof of specific intent to kill; torture causing death shall be deemed the equivalent of intent to kill.
Idaho Code § 18-4001
Murder defined
Applied in 40 court decisions — leading case Thompson v. Oklahoma (1988)
Most recently applied in State v. Colpitts (March 2022)
I.C., § 18-4001, as added by 1972, ch. 336, § 1, p. 844; am. 1977, ch. 154, § 1, p. 390; am. 2002, ch. 330, § 1, p. 935.
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Current official text: Idaho Statutes (Idaho Legislature). Digitized from the UniCourt Code Improvement Commission public-domain capture. Reproduced from public-domain Idaho statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.