Homicide

The term homicide refers to the act of killing another human being and comes from the Latin word homo for a human being, and –cide from the Latin caedere meaning “to kill.” The term homicide is used as a criminal offense in the United States, whereas in Britain, the criminal offense is usually referred to as murder, with manslaughter referring to the taking of human life in a manner, at law, less culpable than murder.

There are several derivative terms that come from the word homicide, including parricide (killing of one's parents), patricide (killing of one's father), matricide (killing of one's mother), mariticide (killing of one's spouse), uxorcide (killing of one's wife), filicide (killing of one's children), fratricide (killing of one's brother or a friend in battle), sororicide (killing of one's sister), infanticide (killing of an infant), regicide (killing of a monarch), genocide (killing of a race), and suicide (killing of oneself).

Although nowadays the laws in most countries are the same regardless of the person killed, throughout history there have been laws governing these, often involving harsher punishments for some types of homicide. For example, in Rome, the offense of parricide resulted in one of the harshest punishments involving flogging and eventually drowning at sea with the culprit sewn, along with a dog and a rooster, into a leather sack symbolizing the womb. However, since medieval times, the punishments for most types of homicides have been the same, except for regicide, for which horrendous punishments were often prescribed. Following the restoration of King Charles II in 1660, the new royal government sought to arrest the “Regi-cides”—those who had been involved in the trial and execution of the king's father, King Charles I, in 1649. This resulted in the tracking down of all the judges involved in the trial of Charles I, and their imprisonment or execution, or their murder. Those involved in the [Page 858]execution of King Louis XVI of France in 1793 were also known as Regicides although they did not gain the same notoriety as those in Britain. The criminal code generally divides homicidal crimes into three different fields: murder, manslaughter, and criminal homicide. The first includes felony murder and capital murder. Manslaughter includes voluntary manslaughter, involuntary manslaughter, intoxication manslaughter, death by dangerous driving, and reckless manslaughter. Criminal homicide includes culpable homicide in Scottish law, with negligent homicide in some criminal jurisdictions, and criminally negligent homicide.

There has regularly been a difficult legal problem concerning suicide. For religious reasons, it is often regarded as a criminal offence, and during the Middle Ages and early modern Europe, attempted suicide was often regarded as attempted murder. There has also been a complicated legal area concerning assisting someone else committing suicide, with it being regarded as a criminal offense in most parts of the world.

There have been many books on the topic of homicide, with a number concentrating on the forensic or medical aspects of the various cases, some providing psychological information on the people concerned, and others dealing with the cases from a legal angle.

...