Zeuhl has made a valid point that really should be answered.
And I want to draw attention to something...if I get into a fight with someone, punch them and they fall to the ground hitting their head on the pavement and subsequently die, should my sentence be the same as a man who lies in bushes, jumps out and stabs a chap in the face twenty times with a machete?
This is going to sound counter-intuative - but we HAVE to have 'degrees of murder'.
If you punch someone, you are not necessarily thinking of murdering them.
If you grind a broken bottle into their carotid artery for five minutes, then you probably ARE trying to murder them.
The law needs to reflect these different forms of killing.
d9f1c7 - you wrote "To the hand wringing left flip flop it is the same. They love to use the law to protect violent criminals"
I would suggest that isn't the case.