“Premeditation” means thinking about something beforehand, for some length of time, however short; “deliberation” refers to an intention to kill formed while defendant was in a “cool state of blood.”

All premeditation and deliberation require is the time it takes to form the intent, ponder the crime, and then act. Defendants can premeditate and deliberate in a matter of minutes, as long as the thought process occurs before the act. And no specific formula exists for determining whether a defendant premeditated and deliberated before acting.

An intentional, premeditated, and deliberate murder is murder of the first degree, while second-degree murder is committed intentionally but without premeditation or deliberation. The distinction was created in order to limit the use of the death penalty, which generally has been imposed only for first-degree murder.