Successful murder does more actual harm, and thus if you weigh not just intent but actual harm, you get a more severe punishment (think, for example, of felony murder, where the perpetrators don’t necessarily intend to kill anyone but someone does die as a result of them committing a felony).
Treating murder more harshly than attempted murder gives someone attempting murder a practical incentive not to follow through and finish the job.
Might also be worth noting that you rarely just get charged with the worst thing you did. We have so many laws and so many variations on what constitutes a crime. “Attempted Murder” becomes a litany of crimes depending on where you were standing, how you got there, what you were using to attempt the murder, who you were aiming at, why you wanted them dead, what you said and did before and after the crime, and what degree of collateral damage you inflicted along the way.
You could very easily face more time for attempted murder than actual murder, purely depending on how many charges the DA wanted to file against you.
Over here in Germany and probably the entire EU punishments don’t stack.
If you commit multiple crimes doing a single act (e.g. in a bank robbery: violations of weapon law, trespassing, theft, threatening personnel, driving violations…) only the most severe one is prosecuted.
Multiple seperate crimes can stack but the punishment must be strictly less than the sum of punishments if they were prosecuted independently and must be less than 15 years (unless murder is involved).
There is no way in which you can get less time for murder than for attempted murder here.
It’s both because:
You claim to be a Senior Wikipedia Editor, yet you provided a reference to StackExchange. Curious.
Might also be worth noting that you rarely just get charged with the worst thing you did. We have so many laws and so many variations on what constitutes a crime. “Attempted Murder” becomes a litany of crimes depending on where you were standing, how you got there, what you were using to attempt the murder, who you were aiming at, why you wanted them dead, what you said and did before and after the crime, and what degree of collateral damage you inflicted along the way.
You could very easily face more time for attempted murder than actual murder, purely depending on how many charges the DA wanted to file against you.
That sounds pretty insane tbh
Over here in Germany and probably the entire EU punishments don’t stack.
If you commit multiple crimes doing a single act (e.g. in a bank robbery: violations of weapon law, trespassing, theft, threatening personnel, driving violations…) only the most severe one is prosecuted.
Multiple seperate crimes can stack but the punishment must be strictly less than the sum of punishments if they were prosecuted independently and must be less than 15 years (unless murder is involved).
There is no way in which you can get less time for murder than for attempted murder here.