Homicide

Homicide is literally the death of one person at the hand of another. The term derives from the Latin: homo (human being) and caedere (to kill). Thus, in its purest sense, the term is free from implication of intent or criminality despite a persistent perception by some to the contrary. These latter views derive from the circumstances under which the life was taken. Manner of death is a shorthand means of classifying “why” a death occurred. There are four traditionally recognized specific categories of manner of death—natural, accident, suicide, and homicide; if a death cannot be conveniently placed into one of the foregoing, the manner of death is certified as “undetermined.”

Medicolegal investigators charged with making the determination of manner of death are usually the coroner or medical examiner. The legal system has a vested interest establishing the guilt or innocence of a perpetrator in causing a death. In criminal cases, when the state prosecutor attempts to establish the perpetrator's criminal responsibility he or she must also consider the elements of the crime to properly classify the death: (a) unlawfully causing death, (b) of a living human being, and (c) the perpetrator's state of mind (mens rea). In the completely separate civil legal system, the plaintiff's counsel attempts to show actionable responsibility by the defendant for a death.

An interesting element in the all-important issue of intent in medicolegal death certification is that the medical examiner/coroner is not charged with determining the legal construct of intent, rather the inference of intent is made by the prosecutor and then presented to the grand jury; the ultimate determination is by the trial jury. Thus, a hunting “accident” in which an individual is inadvertently killed when mistaken for prey would be properly medicolegally classified as a homicide rather than an accident because the risk and potential outcome of the act were obvious. On occasion, some certifiers tend to follow malleable rules in such cases—perhaps out of misplaced concern over the stigma associated with the term homicide. Regardless, the shooter's intent is not the concern of said certifier.

Culpability of Action

In both legal and medicolegal definitions of homicide, the death may be caused by an act or omission. The end result is of import, not the means by which it is achieved. Thus, starving an infant to death (omission) is equivalent to shooting a victim in the head (act) as a homicide, in that, in both instances, the death was achieved as the result of the perpetrator's actions. Also, it is not necessary for the perpetrator to physically contact (either directly as in a beating or by extension as in a shooting) the victim. If a victim has severe natural disease, such as coronary artery disease, and a robber threatens the victim (brandishing a weapon and/or making threats), causing stress in the victim culminating in a fatal heart attack, the perpetrator is directly responsible for the death, which would correctly be designated as a homicide. The broad legal categorization of “homicide” does not require knowledge; however, criminality relates to motive/ intent or disregard for others' safety as evidenced by the mens rea. In criminal cases, the perpetrator's state of mind speaks to intent; culpable mental states include intentional/purposeful, knowing, reckless, and negligent. The killer's thoughts (as established in court) become the fundamental basis for the legal categorization of the death. Equally important is the perpetrator's understanding of right and wrong and/or the actor's inability to adhere to the right at the time the act occurred, also known as “the insanity defense.” The medical specialty of forensic psychiatry/psychology (also known as behavioral science) is devoted to ascertaining a subject's true state of understanding and intent. That there may not be agreement among the various experts speaks to the difficulty in getting to the fundamental truths in some cases. If significant interpretations of the same facts in different ways by specialists can and does occur, it should come as no surprise that lay juries can become hopelessly deadlocked in an individual case.

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