Murder

The MBE rarely asks “is this murder?” outright; it gives a fact pattern and makes you pick the most serious crime the facts support, forcing you up the homicide ladder. The “tell” is which malice route applies: a death during a dangerous felony (felony murder), conduct showing extreme recklessness toward many, like firing into a crowd (depraved heart), or a deadly weapon aimed at a vital organ, which supports an inference of intent to kill. When premeditation is genuinely absent, an intentional malice killing is second-degree murder, not manslaughter—students wrongly drop two rungs.

Watch the inchoate traps: there is no attempted felony murder and no attempted depraved-heart murder, because attempt demands a specific intent to kill, not mere recklessness. On felony-murder limits, the agency rule (majority) means a co-felon’s death from a victim’s or officer’s return fire is usually not felony murder, and the predicate felony must be independent of the killing (the merger rule bars assault-based felony murder).