A report on Murder and Homicide

Murder in the House by Jakub Schikaneder

Aaron Alexis holding a shotgun during his rampage

A group of Thugs strangling a traveller on a highway in the early 19th century.

International murder rate per 100,000 inhabitants, 2011

Lake Bodom murders in Espoo, Finland is the most famous unsolved homicide cases in Finnish criminal history. The tent is investigated immediately after the murders in 1960.

The scene of a murder in Rio de Janeiro. More than 800,000 people were murdered in Brazil between 1980 and 2004.

Intentional homicide rate per 100,000 inhabitants, 2009

This state of mind may, depending upon the jurisdiction, distinguish murder from other forms of unlawful homicide, such as manslaughter.

- Murder

Homicides can be divided into many overlapping legal categories, including murder, manslaughter, justifiable homicide, assassination, killing in war (either following the laws of war or as a war crime), euthanasia, and capital punishment, depending on the circumstances of the death.

- Homicide

3 related topics with Alpha

Manslaughter

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Manslaughter is a common law legal term for homicide considered by law as less culpable than murder.

Anarchist Auguste Vaillant about to be guillotined in France in 1894

Capital punishment

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State-sanctioned practice of killing a person as a punishment for a crime.

The Christian Martyrs' Last Prayer, by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1883). Roman Circus Maximus.

Beheading of John the Baptist, woodcut by Julius Schnorr von Karolsfeld, 1860

The Death of Socrates (1787), in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

The breaking wheel was used during the Middle Ages and was still in use into the 19th century.

The burning of Jakob Rohrbach, a leader of the peasants during the German Peasants' War.

Antiporta of Dei delitti e delle pene (On Crimes and Punishments), 1766 ed.

50 Poles tried and sentenced to death by a Standgericht in retaliation for the assassination of 1 German policeman in Nazi-occupied Poland, 1944

Emperor Shomu banned the death penalty in Japan in 724.

Peter Leopold II abolished the death penalty throughout Tuscany in 1786, making it the first nation in modern history to do so.

Mother Catherine Cauchés (center) and her two daughters Guillemine Gilbert (left) and Perotine Massey (right) with her infant son burning for heresy

The Red Guard prisoners are being executed by the Whites in Varkaus, North Savonia, during the 1918 Finnish Civil War.

A sign at the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport warns arriving travelers that drug trafficking is a capital crime in the Republic of China (photo taken in 2005)

Execution of a war criminal in Germany in 1946

A gurney at San Quentin State Prison in California formerly used for executions by lethal injection

Capital punishment was abolished in the United Kingdom in part because of the case of Timothy Evans, who was executed in 1950 after being wrongfully convicted of two murders that had in fact been committed by his landlord, John Christie. The case was considered vital in bolstering opposition, which limited the scope of the penalty in 1957 and abolished it completely, for murder, in 1965.

Article 2 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union affirms the prohibition on capital punishment in the EU

Signatories to the Second Optional Protocol to the ICCPR: parties in dark green, signatories in light green, non-members in grey

Abolitionist countries: 109
Abolitionist-in-law countries for all crimes except those committed under exceptional circumstances (such as crimes committed in wartime): 7
Abolitionist-in-practice countries (have not executed anyone during the past 10 years or more and are believed to have a policy or established practice of not carrying out executions): 25
Retentionist countries: 54

Number of abolitionist and retentionist countries by year
Number of retentionist countries
Number of abolitionist countries

A map showing U.S. states where the death penalty is authorized for certain crimes, even if not recently used. The death penalty is also authorized for certain federal and military crimes.
States with a valid death penalty statute
States without the death penalty

Same-sex intercourse illegal: Death penalty for homosexuality
Death penalty in legislation, but not applied

Crimes that are punishable by death are known as capital crimes, capital offences, or capital felonies, and vary depending on the jurisdiction, but commonly include serious crimes against the person, such as murder, mass murder, aggravated cases of rape (often including child sexual abuse), terrorism, aircraft hijacking, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, along with crimes against the state such as attempting to overthrow government, treason, espionage, sedition, and piracy, among other crimes.

A further example comes from Ancient Greece, where the Athenian legal system replacing customary oral law was first written down by Draco in about 621 BC: the death penalty was applied for a particularly wide range of crimes, though Solon later repealed Draco's code and published new laws, retaining capital punishment only for intentional homicide, and only with victim's family permission.

The Death of Socrates, by Jacques-Louis David (1787), depicting Socrates prepared to drink hemlock, following his conviction for corrupting the youth of Athens

Euthanasia

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Practice of intentionally ending life to relieve pain and suffering.

Felix Adler, circa 1913, the first prominent American to argue for permitting suicide in cases of chronic illness

Hartheim Euthanasia Centre, where over 18,000 people were killed.

Current status of euthanasia around the world:
Active voluntary euthanasia legal (Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain and the states of New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia)
Passive euthanasia legal (refusal of treatment / withdrawal of life support)
Active euthanasia illegal, passive euthanasia not legislated or regulated
All forms of euthanasia illegal

Involuntary euthanasia, which is done without asking for consent or against the patient's will, is illegal in all countries and is usually considered murder.

The judicial sense of the term "homicide" includes any intervention undertaken with the express intention of ending a life, even to relieve intractable suffering.