Manslaughter types and definitions

Below I put what a general definition of manslaughter in the first degree would be. You may also want to contact the attorney who handled your friends case to have them explain the elements of the specific case and fill them into the charge to help explain the situation.

Manslaughter in the first degree is the unlawful and intentional killing of a human being, but without malice, and whenever one person unlawfully and intentionally, but without malice kills another person, the homicide is manslaughter in the first degree. Now malice is not an ingredient or essential of the offense of manslaughter in the first degree. In manslaughter in the first degree, there must be either a positive intention to kill, or an act of violence from which ordinarily, in the course of events, death or great bodily harm may ensue. In order for a homicide to be reduced from murder to manslaughter, there must be no malice in the killing. In other words, it must not be malicious killing. If the killing is malicious even if it is done in the heat of passion, it is murder. Even if a killing is done in a sudden heat, excited by sufficient provocation if there is malice in it, it is murder, and if deliberation and premeditation are present, then it is murder in the first degree. Anger and rage do not reduce an unlawful killing from murder to manslaughter, if it has the other elements which are necessary to constitute murder, but if a killing is done in a sudden heat of passion, and the reason of the man- slayer is distributed or swayed by that passion, and this passion is excited by sufficient provocation, such as a blow or a threatened blow, and the killing is without malice, then it is manslaughter in the first degree, because such passion under such circumstances has disturbed the sway of reason.