Editing Murder (section)

===Victim===
All jurisdictions require that the victim be a natural person; that is, a human being who was still alive before being murdered. In other words, under the law one cannot murder a [[cadaver|corpse]], a corporation, a non-human animal, or any other non-human organism such as a plant or bacterium.

[[California]]'s murder statute, [[California Penal Code|penal code]] [[Murder (California)|section 187]], expressly mentioned a fetus as being capable of being killed, and was interpreted by the [[Supreme Court of California]] in 1994 as not requiring any proof of the viability of the fetus as a prerequisite to a murder conviction.<ref name="davis">''People v. Davis'', [http://online.ceb.com/CalCases/C4/7C4t797.htm 7 Cal. 4th 797, 30 Cal. Rptr. 2d 50, 872 P.2d 591] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150904003144/http://online.ceb.com/CalCases/C4/7C4t797.htm |date=2015-09-04 }} (1994).</ref> This holding has two implications. Firstly, a defendant in California can be convicted of murder for killing a fetus which the mother herself could have terminated without committing a crime.<ref name="davis" /> And secondly, as stated by Justice [[Stanley Mosk]] in his dissent, because women carrying nonviable fetuses may not be visibly pregnant, it may be possible for a defendant to be convicted of intentionally murdering a person they did not know existed.<ref name="davis" />