Homicide Case Studies

Real World Assessment and Decision-making

Kyle A. Burgason, Mark Ruelas, Thomas T. Zawisza

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367463045
• eBook ISBN: 9781000516067
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Homicide Case Studies is a first-of-its-kind text, offering readers more than 30 case studies drawn from real-world homicide cases that include the often-overlooked context and complexities faced by victims, offenders, law enforcement, attorneys, jurors, and correctional personnel.

From investigating different forms of homicides to deciding what charges should be filed, weighty decisions about homicide cases must be made by professionals. This book provides nuanced scenarios and critical thinking questions that put readers in the role, giving them the ability to apply what they've learned to make well-thought-out and just decisions concerning each case. Students learn through the Andragogical approach fostering an individualized learning experience that bridges the academic–professional gap—finally providing an answer to the question "When am I going to use this?"

This book is ideal for undergraduate and graduate students in criminal justice, as well as scholars, policymakers, and others with an interest in the rich and complex world of criminal homicide.

1

Types of Homicide

DOI: 10.4324/9781003028055-2

With approximately 15,000 to 19,000 homicides per year in the US (Bohm, 2017; CDC, 2021), it stands to reason that there are a number of different homicide typologies, often with each type possessing its own unique set of legal standards and an everchanging array of contextual elements that can be as varied as the individual(s) who commit the acts. As stated in the Introduction, homicide is the killing of a human being by another; however, the legal response to such killings varies widely and depends on a number of circumstances, such as the intent of the offender at the time of killing or what is termed mens rea (guilty mind). This criminal culpability falls somewhere on the following descending continuum: purposely, knowingly, recklessly, and negligently. For example, a law enforcement officer who kills an offender during the commission of a serious felony has indeed committed a homicide; however, in the given context it would most likely fall under what the authors term legal homicide or justifiable homicide (DeLisi, 2015). A similar instance of legal homicide can occur when an individual chooses to “stand their ground” when they are being assaulted and their life is threatened and fatally wounds their attacker.

A homicide that is criminal behavior is murder. According to federal law, murder is the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought (Pollock, 2016). This means that the offender planned ahead of time or deliberated in a specific way to cause the death of another human being. Homicides that meet this level of culpability are known as first-degree murders, and are often the crimes that we see on popular tv shows such as Law & Order, Hawaii Five-0, and Chicago P.D. Lesser forms of homicide, such as second-degree murder, lack the element of premeditation but still result in the intentional killing of another human being. Additionally, second-degree murder can also result from a defendant who acts to cause serious bodily harm. In such circumstances, although the defendant does not necessarily intend to kill, they act to cause harm with the knowledge that death might result. The mens rea with second-degree murder may be less of an intent to kill and more that the defendant’s actions demonstrated an indifference to death. Thus, an offender acted impulsively with an intent and understanding of their actions (Pollock, 2016). States have created additional statutes that are reserved for crimes committed in a “heat of passion” where the defendant may not have fully understood what they were doing. Additionally, while second-degree murder may result from impulsive actions of the defendant, voluntary manslaughter is typically reserved for impulsive killings that are provoked (Justia, n.d.; Pollock, 2016). Examine the lowest level of mens rea; a homicide committed due to accident or negligence is referred to as involuntary manslaughter and is the unintentional killing that results either from criminal negligence or the commission of a low-level criminal act such as a misdemeanor. It is differentiated from other forms of homicide, because it does not require deliberation, premeditation, or intent. As such, involuntary manslaughter is the lowest level category of homicide (Justia, n.d.; DeLisi, 2015). Homicides are also differentiated and grouped by certain characteristics of the crime (age, weapon utilized) and/or the relationship between the victim and offender (DeLisi, 2015).

The murder of child by their parent is referred to as filicide. Although we often hear about such tragedies on the news or see them come across our social media accounts, the homicide itself is rare. As DeLisi (2015) notes, a large-scale study by Mariano and et al. (2014) examining 32 years of data from the FBI Supplemental Homicide Reports found that filicide accounted for 15 percent of all homicides during that time period. Perhaps even more disturbing was that approximately one-third of the victims were less than 1 year of age with two-thirds of victims aged 6 years or less. The manner of such murders is as unsettling as the ages of the victims and involved beatings with hands or feet, strangulation, asphyxiation, drowning, and being thrown out a window. The prevalence of such murders has been estimated at 0.56 per 100,000 children per year (Makhlouf & Rambaud, 2014).

The murder of children in their first year of life has its own typology, and is referred to as infanticide. The incidence of infanticide is estimated at 8 per 100,000 in the US (DeLisi, 2015) with the infant’s biological mother as the offender in the majority of cases. Similar to filicide, the common methods utilized in these killings are grotesque and often include smothering, suffocation, and drowning. In their review of 40 years of research on the topic, Porter and Gavin (2010) summarized that these murders “are generally committed by more mature women who use a variety of violent methods, may premeditate the crime, and engage in infanticide for reasons ranging from retaliation against another adult to child abuse or neglect to removal of an unwanted child” (p. 108). Killing of the youngest children, in their first 24 hours of life, is referred to as neonaticide. Although rare, one 18-year study in France found its prevalence to be 0.12 per 100,000 births (Makhlouf & Rambaud, 2014). These murders usually occur at the hands of the mother who often conceals the pregnancy, has the child absent from a hospital, and then suffocates, strangles, or drowns the unwanted newborn before hiding the corpse (Porter & Gavin, 2010, p. 108). The methods of killing for neonaticides often include trauma to the head of the infant or death as result of neglect. DeLisi (2015) details the most common reasons for committing such an offense have been the parent’s belief that the killing will spare the child from real or perceived suffering, suffering from mental illness or psychotic breakdown, revenge against a partner, accident, or simply the killing of an unwanted child (Resnick, 1969, 1970).

Young children are not the only age segment of our society with a direct typology of homicide as eldercide is the homicide of a person age 65 years or older. A disturbing finding is that the majority of severe abuse incidents that often lead to death tend to be against females and perpetrated by someone known to the victim (Abbey, 2009; Friedman, Avila, Tanouye, & Joseph, 2011). The rate is more than three times lower than the rate of persons aged 64 years or younger and accounts for approximately 4 percent of homicides annually (Roberts & Willits, 2011). In fact, a more recent large-scale study found that elderly homicide rates have remained stable over a 25-year span from 1985 to 2009 and that overall, elderly homicides account for a fraction of total homicides (Feldmeyer & Steffensmeier, 2013). These findings suggest that a homicide involving a person in the latter decades of life is quite rare.

Just as parents can kill their children, sometimes children can kill their parents or other close relatives, and this type of homicide is referred to as parricide. The two most common types of parricide are patricide (the killing one’s father) and matricide (the killing of one’s mother). A study by Palermo (2014) found abuse of the child coupled with a highly dysfunctional family dynamic, which breeds homicidal behaviors, was a shared theme among these offenders. After the celebrated case of the Menendez Brothers in the early 1990s, researchers focusing on parricide developed three broad typologies of offenders that kill their parents. These include children that kill to end abuse, mentally ill children who kill as a result from their disorder, and dangerously antisocial children who kill as part of their involvement in conduct problems and violence (Heide, 1993, 1994, 2007; Walsh, Krienert, & Crowder, 2008). As with any study that pegs mental illness as a risk factor for delinquency and crime, it is imperative to remember there are many individuals who have issues with mental illness that do not turn out to be killers. Therefore, casual links should not be drawn directly from mental illness to any type of homicide. Staying in the immediate family, the killing of one’s brother or sister is referred to as fratricide. Those who murder their siblings commonly have a host of family, environmental, and psychological complications in early life including psychopathic traits, cruelty toward children, hostile and destructive relationships with parents, insecure home life, and suffer numerous forms of abuse (Ewing, 1997; Heide, 1999a, 1999b; Shumaker & Prinz, 2000).

The killing of an individual by their intimate partner goes by many names, intimate partner homicide, domestic homicide, and spousal homicide, but the legal name for this type of killing is uxoricide. DeLisi (2015) notes that studies in the US, Canada, and Africa have found similarities in motives for spousal killings in that they include sexual jealousy, alleged or real infidelity, and an instrumental need to replace one’s spouse with a new intimate partner. Additionally, these killings are significantly more likely to occur when couples are apart compared to when they are cohabitating. A meta-analysis of nearly half a million homicides in over 60 nations revealed that intimate partner homicide accounted for approximately 13.5 percent of world homicides and nearly 40 percent of all female homicides (Stöckl, Devries, Rotstein, Abrahams, Campbell, Watts, & Moreno, 2013). It is easy to focus on the direct victims of homicide, as they are easy to identify. In the case of uxoricide, it is important not to lose sight of the collateral damage that is being done, particularly to children, as a single act of homicide has the potential to adversely affect at least three lives. One parent is dead, the other is most likely going to prison, and the child is now left without a biological parent. Children who lose one parent to murder and the other to the criminal justice system have their lives changed in terms of who becomes their guardian, where they live, the school they attend, and other logistical issues (DeLisi, 2015). Research in Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES) reveals that even into adulthood, child survivors of such tragedies are at an increased risk of suffering psychiatric problems, intimate partner abuse in their own relationships, and generally amplified levels of psychopathology (Craig, Piquero, Farrington, & Ttofi, 2017; Felitti et al., 1998; Parker, Steeves, Anderson, & Moran, 2004).

Serial killers are some of the most infamous criminals in the US. The fascination with such people as John Wayne Gacy and Ted Bundy often leads people to think that these killers are in our society in large numbers when in fact the exact opposite is true. In fact, such killers represent only four-tenths of 1 percent of the annual homicide rate (Schlesinger, 2001), and they generally murder their victims within an hour after abduction (Godwin & Rosen, 2005). Serial homicide is often repeated over a period of years or even decades (DeLisi, 2015). One of the flagship typologies of serial killers states they are defined as offenders that murder at least three victims with stoppages or “cooling-off” periods between victims (Holmes & DeBurger, 1988). These typologies are grouped via their motivations for such killings including visionary murderers, believed to be psychotic and driven by hallucinatory voices or visions; mission-oriented killers, inspired to remove certain groups of people from society, such as prostitutes; power/control-oriented killers, encouraged by the feeling of life-or-death control over their victims; and hedonistic killers, who get a thrill or obtain pleasure from the act of killing. This latter typology (hedonistic killers) is often categorized into the sub-groups of lust killers, and thrill killers (DeLisi, 2015; Murray, 2017).

Sandy Hook Elementary, Columbine High School, Virginia Tech University, Pulse nightclub and a cavalcade of other instances over past two decades have fueled American’s fascination with and fear of mass shooters. Although there are variations in the definition of mass murder (Lankford, 2015; Smart & Schell, 2021), DeLisi (2015) notes the legal term, multicide, or mass murders, is the killing of multiple victims during a single event with roughly the same location or place and occurring at the same time, claiming even fewer victims than serial murders (Duwe, 2007). Unlike serial killings, mass murders generally are readily resolved because the offense typically is committed in an open setting and ends with the offender committing suicide or being shot or captured by the police. Despite sensational news cove...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Causes and Correlates: An Introduction
• 1. Types of Homicide
• 2. Homicide Investigations and Interrogations
• 3. Juvenile Homicide
• 4. Legal Homicide and Wrongful Deaths
• 5. Courts, Correction, and Homicide
• 6. Current Issues in Homicide
• 7. Lessons Learned
• Index