Many Questions and a Few Answers about Britny's Law

This session, the General Assembly passed S.L. 2017-94, which creates a rebuttable presumption that certain domestic violence homicides are premeditated and deliberate and therefore constitute first-degree murder. WRAL explains here that the measure is known as  Britny’s Law “in memory of Britny Jordan Puryear, a 22-year-old who was shot and killed by her live-in boyfriend, Logan McLean, in their Fuquay-Varina home on Nov. 6, 2014, after a four-year abusive relationship.” The bill raises many questions, which this post attempts to answer. Summary of the bill. The bill amends the murder statute, G.S. 14-17. It provides that when a murder is committed (1) with malice “based on an inherently dangerous act or omission, done in such a reckless and wanton manner as to manifest a mind utterly without regard for human life and social duty and deliberately bent on mischief,” and (2) against a “spouse, former spouse, a person with whom the defendant lives or has lived as if married, a person with whom the defendant is or has been in a dating relationship as defined in G.S. 50B‑1(b)(6), or a person with whom the defendant shares a child in common,” and (3) the defendant “has previously been convicted of one of [certain enumerated domestic violence] offenses involving the same victim,” then there is a “rebuttable presumption” that the killing is premeditated and deliberate first-degree murder. Is this a new crime? I don’t think so. One could argue that the bill delineates new elements, and so creates a new crime -- or [...]