Abstract

Homicide has a great impact on the community and the handling of homicide cases entails a high level of knowledge and skill. All homicides are not criminal: they may also be justifiable or excusable. Justifiable homicide involves the intentional but lawful killing of another. Excusable homicide involves one person killing another by accident without gross negligence and without intent to injure. Self-inflicted death is treated by the police as homicide until it can be established as suicide. Criminal homicide is the unlawful taking of a human life. There are two kinds of criminal homicide: murder and manslaughter. Further classifications of unlawful homicide—such as first-degree (in police/prosecutor jargon: “murder one”) versus second-degree murder; voluntary manslaughter (heat of passion) versus involuntary manslaughter (reckless or vehicular); and so on—are to be found in the penal laws of the states. The chapter illustrates how the three sources of information—people, physical evidence, and records—are employed to solve homicides. It includes crimes with no apparent motive in which the killer seems to have escaped undetected (cases that confront the detective with a true mystery), and other kinds of homicides more easily handled by the trained, perceptive investigator.

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