If you have been charged with homicide, murder or manslaughter charges in Atlanta, Georgia you could be facing life imprisonment or even the death penalty.
In Georgia, the term homicide covers both murder and manslaughter, and there is only one degree of murder in Georgia, which is when someone kills someone else intentionally or when committing a felony.
Manslaughter is also the taking of one life by another, but usually when there was no true intent to commit murder, such as in an automobile accident.
If you are convicted of murder the minimum sentence is life in prison up to the death penalty. If the charge is reduced to voluntary manslaughter, which is when you have been seriously provoked to kill someone, then that has a prison sentence of up to 20 years. Involuntary manslaughter is when someone is killed unintentionally and when the person who committed the crime was acting illegally or recklessly and has a maximum 10 year prison sentence, but it can also be reduced to a misdemeanor with a sentence of under a year in jail.
If you help someone to commit suicide, that is punishable by up to five years in jail.
While it is true that manslaughter and murder charges are serious, there are several instances as to why someone takes the life of another which can include self defense, or protecting someone else. It could also be an accident.
Given the range of potential convictions, it is vital that you have an experienced criminal defense attorney who can look at all of the options and thoroughly check all of the evidence, as well as go through how the evidence was obtained and the procedure of your arrest.
