Well, strict consequentialists determine the goodness or badness of an action only by the consequences, not by the intentions of the actor. And that seems to fly in the face of our moral intuitions (as in the attempted murder example), which is why I hypothesized that there are not many strict consequentialist.

As you suggest, a possible way out would be to say that we punish even attempted murder, because it might discourage others to attempt (and possibly succeed) doing the same. And that is what I would call a 'post-hoc explanation'.