Many criminal-law statutes permit more severe punishment of a person convicted of a crime if he or she intended to harm another person. For example, voluntary manslaughter carries a heavier penalty than involuntary manslaughter in most states. Planned crimes are also punished more severely than spur-ofthe-moment crimes. The problem is that juries find it difficult to know what the intent of a person was at the time he or she committed a crime. Many defendants will deny that they intended to harm the other person and claim that any harm that occurred was "accidental." The law asks too much of juries when it expects them to determine what a person was thinking. Juries should only be asked to weigh objective evidence