What caused Li to kill his mother in the street? Whether this is an impulsive or premeditated act is still unknown. But most of these cases are passionate crimes. Li's behavior led to his mother's death, which is definitely a criminal offence. But her behavior may not be regarded as intentional homicide, but as intentional injury. The biggest difference between intentional injury and intentional homicide lies in the difference of criminal purpose.
In the crime of intentional injury, the actor's purpose is to cause physical injury to the victim, and there is no intention to deprive the victim of his life. In the crime of intentional homicide, the actor's purpose is to deprive the victim of his life, and hurting the victim's body is only a means. The crime of intentional injury may cause the death of the victim, but the death of the victim is an aggravating circumstance of the crime of intentional injury, which will not change the nature of the crime of intentional injury itself and should still be treated as the crime of intentional injury.
The crime of intentional homicide may also occur without a criminal result, and the victim is spared. But even if the victim is not dead, the perpetrator still belongs to the crime of intentional homicide, but because of the attempted crime, the punishment can be lighter or mitigated compared with the completed crime. Whether the perpetrator's subjective motive is murder or intentional injury is mainly judged according to whether the perpetrator has premeditated, the purpose, means and performance of the crime afterwards.
In this case, it is believed that Li and his mother had a dispute over trivial matters. They hit people in the street, and the high probability is not premeditated, but impulsive, so the high probability is only intentional injury, and there is no intention to kill. Of course, whether it is intentional injury or intentional killing depends on the speed and position of the impact at that time. If the impact speed is fast and the impact force is strong, it may also be considered as intentional homicide.
However, because Li's behavior is a family dispute, the subjective malignancy of such criminals is smaller than that of strangers, and it is often easy to get the understanding of the victim's family, so the punishment will be relatively light in practice. Therefore, if the final verification is true, Li will be sentenced to life imprisonment or more than 10 years in prison, and it is unlikely to be sentenced to death.
Finally, no matter what the final result of this case is, through this incident, we can remind everyone that as children, we must learn to understand our parents and not lose our heads after quarreling, which is irresponsible to our family.