Being an assassin is illegal everywhere in the United States. There is no license, no exemption, and no jurisdiction where killing someone for pay or on contract is lawful. Federal law and every state’s criminal code treat it as murder, and a dedicated federal statute criminalizes the hiring, the agreeing, and even the phone calls that set a killing in motion. Penalties run from ten years in prison up to the death penalty.
The Federal Murder-for-Hire Law
The statute aimed most directly at assassins is 18 U.S.C. § 1958. It makes it a federal crime to use any means of interstate commerce or travel with the intent that a murder be committed in exchange for payment. The reach is wide. A cell phone call, a text, a wire transfer, an email, or a drive across a state line in connection with a planned killing-for-pay is enough to pull the case into federal court, because nearly all modern communication and travel crosses state lines.
Penalties scale with what happens:
- Up to 10 years in prison and a fine if no one is injured.
- Up to 20 years and a fine if personal injury results.
- Death or life in prison, plus a fine of up to $250,000, if death results.
Conspiring to commit murder-for-hire carries the same penalties as carrying it out. Prosecutors do not need a body. The agreement plus a step toward carrying it out is enough.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 1958 – Use of Interstate Commerce Facilities in the Commission of Murder-for-Hire
That is the practical answer to anyone asking whether a “professional” arrangement changes the legal picture. It does not. Accepting money to kill, and then picking up a phone to discuss logistics, is a federal indictment.
How Murder Is Charged Federally
Federal law defines murder as the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought. That phrase covers acting with intent to kill, intent to cause serious bodily harm, or extreme reckless disregard for human life. A planned killing fits comfortably inside the definition.
Murder is split into two degrees. First-degree covers premeditated, deliberate killings, along with deaths caused during certain felonies such as kidnapping, robbery, or arson. Everything else intentional falls into second-degree. An assassination, by nature planned, almost always qualifies as first-degree murder. The penalty is death or life imprisonment. Second-degree murder carries any term of years up to life.
Killings of certain officials come with their own enhanced statutes. The President, Vice President, President-elect, and anyone acting as President are covered by 18 U.S.C. § 1751, which authorizes life imprisonment or the death penalty for a completed killing and allows a life sentence for an attempt.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 1751 – Presidential and Presidential Staff Assassination, Kidnapping, and Assault; Penalties A parallel law covers foreign heads of state, ambassadors, diplomats, and other internationally protected persons.3Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 US Code 1116 – Murder or Manslaughter of Foreign Officials, Official Guests, or Internationally Protected Persons
A separate statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1959, targets killings carried out as payment from, or to gain standing within, a racketeering enterprise. The maximum is death or life in prison, and even an attempt or conspiracy carries up to ten years.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 1959 – Violent Crimes in Aid of Racketeering Activity Organized hitmen are the obvious target.
You Don’t Have to Succeed to Go to Prison
Federal law criminalizes the steps leading up to a killing, and prosecutors use those charges hard.
Conspiracy
If two or more people agree to commit murder and any one of them takes a concrete step toward carrying it out, every member of the conspiracy can be sentenced to any term of years or life. The overt act does not need to be dramatic. Renting a car, buying supplies, or watching the target can qualify.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 US Code 1117 – Conspiracy to Murder
Attempt
Taking a substantial step toward killing someone, with the intent to kill, is attempted murder even if the victim survives or the plan collapses. The federal maximum is 20 years.6Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 1113 – Attempt to Commit Murder or Manslaughter
Solicitation
Asking, encouraging, or paying someone else to commit murder is itself a federal crime. It does not matter if the person approached refuses, reports it to the police, or turns out to be an undercover agent. The person asking does not need to plan to be present at the killing. Federal solicitation charges for violent crimes can carry penalties on par with the completed offense.
When the Death Penalty Is on the Table
Not every federal murder conviction is death-eligible. A capital sentence requires the jury to find at least one statutory aggravating factor beyond the killing itself. Two of those factors are built for assassination:
- Killing in exchange for something of monetary value, or in the expectation of such payment.
- Procuring the killing by paying or promising to pay someone else to do it.
The person who pulls the trigger and the person who paid both face capital exposure under these provisions.7Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 US Code 3592 – Mitigating and Aggravating Factors To Be Considered in Determining Whether a Sentence of Death Is Justified The defendant also has to clear the threshold for a federal death sentence: the killing must have been intentional, or the defendant must have intentionally participated in an act contemplating that someone would die.8Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 US Code 3591 – Sentence of Death Anyone under 18 at the time of the offense is not eligible.
What State Law Adds
Most murders are prosecuted at the state level, not federal, and every state criminalizes intentional killing. The framework is familiar across jurisdictions: first-degree for premeditated killings and the toughest penalties, second-degree for intentional killings without premeditation, manslaughter for killings without malice. A contract killing or politically motivated assassination would almost always be charged as first-degree murder in state court.
Roughly half of U.S. states still have the death penalty on the books, though not all of them actively carry out executions. Where capital punishment is unavailable, the ceiling for first-degree murder is life imprisonment, often without parole. Many states also have their own murder-for-hire statutes that run parallel to the federal law, so the same conduct can be charged in either or both systems.
A Note on the Government’s Own Ban
The prohibition on assassination also runs the other way. Executive Order 12333, signed in 1981 and still in force, states that “No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in or conspire to engage in assassination,” and bars intelligence agencies from asking anyone else to do what the order forbids.9Department of Defense – PCLT. Executive Order 12333 The order does not define “assassination,” and its application during armed conflict has been debated for decades, with targeted killings of enemy combatants in wartime generally treated as lawful acts of war rather than assassination. Outside a recognized armed conflict, the ban is unambiguous. None of this creates any space in which a private person may lawfully kill for hire.