Description
CLIENT: DC SNIPER – LEE BOYD MALVO
**no need to worry about first bullet, I will complete that part. I live in the area and decided to choose one of the snipers as my client for this course**
For this course, you will assume the following scenario: Imagine that you have been retained by your “client’s” defense attorney as a sentencing advocate to mitigate a possible death penalty sentence in your client’s case. Your role in this capacity is to work as a sentencing advocate on behalf of your client (the defendant).
In Week 5, you will prepare a comprehensive case study report. This report will contain an analysis of the psychological factors that may have contributed to the commission of the crimes in the chosen case study and how these psychological factors should be considered as a basis for a prison sentence less than the death penalty. For the purpose of this discussion, you are proceeding as if the defendant is still alive and has not yet been sentenced even if the case has already been resolved.
In your initial post of 300 words, please address the directives below:
Tell your peers who your client is and why you made that choice. That is, discuss what it was about the case and the defendant that interested you.
Assess what mental disorders your client might be suffering from that may have contributed to the crime, based upon your preliminary research on this case and client, and your assigned textbook readings.
Describe the disorder(s) including its signs and symptoms. Connect the signs and symptoms that you believe apply to your client’s behavior.
Explain what your textbook says about the likelihood that your client’s mental state contributed to the crime(s).
Discuss whether psychopathy, insanity, or competence to stand trial are potential issues in your client’s case, based upon your preliminary research of the case and your assigned textbook readings.
Support your claims with examples from the required materials and other scholarly or credible sources
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8
Homicide
South_agency/E+/Getty Images Plus
Learning Outcomes
After reading this chapter, you should be able to
• Explain the availability heuristic and its impact on understanding homicide.
• Differentiate between the categories of homicide.
• Differentiate between serial, mass, and spree murderers.
• Describe the types of family violence that could end in homicide.
• Analyze the demographics of homicide.
• Analyze the extent to which homicide offenders may recidivate.
143
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Introduction
Section 8.1
Introductory Case Study: Jessica Colpitts
In Orofina, Idaho, in May 2017, Samantha Fignani suffered a fatal gunshot wound in her home.
She was just 23 years old. Her family, including her two young daughters, were devastated and
hoped for swift justice. The police took only 2 days to locate Fignani’s killer, a woman named Jessica Colpitts. According to police, Colpitts became enraged when her boyfriend, Joseph Walker,
admitted that he had been romantically involved with Fignani behind Colpitts’s back.
The police had an eyewitness to the shooting, along with jail telephone call recordings of conversations between Walker and Colpitts about Walker’s affair with Fignani. Not too long after the
jail telephone call, Colpitts enlisted the assistance of her friend, Cassie Madsen, to confront Fignani about the affair. Colpitts’s car was spotted on video driving toward Fignani’s home. Madsen
denied knowing that Colpitts would actually kill Fignani during the confrontation. Colpitts had
never been violent before and had never expressed a desire to harm anyone.
However, Colpitts fatally shot Fignani with a shotgun and then laughed as she and Madsen fled
the scene. At trial, Madsen testified that she was stunned that anyone could be so cold as to
laugh about having just shot someone to death in front of the victim’s children. Colpitts’s defense
attorneys tried to convince the jury that Madsen was the killer because there had been a fallout
between Madsen and Fignani over drugs. (Fignani was dealing methamphetamine and would
no longer sell to Madsen.) However, the jury rejected that argument and voted unanimously to
convict Jessica Colpitts of first-degree murder for killing Samantha Fignani.
As you read this chapter, consider the following questions regarding this case:
1. Why is homicide considered one of the most fascinating—and arguably the most challenging—issues in the psychological study of crime?
2. Do you think that Colpitts’s socioeconomic status and other situational factors led to
her committing murder?
3. A love triangle ending in murder might sound familiar. Do you think that homicides are
prevalent in today’s culture?
8.1 Introduction
Homicide may seem as though it is highly prevalent in our culture. True crime episodes of
Dateline and 48 Hours, other documentaries focused on homicide cases, and a number of fictional television shows and movies that glamorize murder and murderers seem to support
the belief that homicide is a frequently occurring crime. However, the data does not support
that notion. It’s important to understand the psychological foundation of our perceptions of
homicide frequency and the individuals who commit such violent acts, as well as the types of
homicides and associated variables.
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Availability Heuristic
Section 8.2
Though it may seem that individuals who commit homicide must be mentally ill, you may
recall from Chapter 2 that most individuals who suffer from serious mental illness are significantly more likely to be victimized than they are to perpetrate a crime. Perpetrators of homicide, for the most part, tend to appear outwardly normal. Recall Jessica Colpitts’s case from
the beginning of the chapter. It seems that she was fueled by jealousy and perhaps an inability
to control her impulses, despite a lack of any prior evidence that she was capable of such violence. In some other cases, murderers epitomize psychopaths in that they are cool, calm, and
calculated. Perhaps you are wondering how it is possible that seemingly normal individuals
are capable of perpetrating such brutal acts of violence, including taking another’s life. This is
a question for which there may be no precise or satisfactory response; however, this chapter
will examine some common features of individuals who kill.
The reality is that most homicide victims are killed by people who are known to them, and
in many cases the murderous violence was shockingly unpredictable. It may be rather unsettling to grasp that we cannot always predict with precision who will become homicidal or
when homicidal behavior will occur, but we will examine the tendencies and variables that
may lead up to these criminal acts.
8.2 Availability Heuristic
Given that there is so much news coverage of murder and homicide, it may lead us to assume
that murders are frequently occurring events. The truth is that homicides are rare. In 2017,
there were approximately 17,200 homicides in the United States. This may sound like a lot
of victims—and it is—but when considering this number out of the 1.2 million total violent
crimes reported by law enforcement agencies to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR)
program, it is a small proportion of the violent crime category. Specifically, only 1.4% of all
violent crimes in 2017 were homicides (FBI, 2018). This rate represents a slight decrease of
approximately 0.7% from 2016 but also shows a significant increase of approximately 17%
from 2013, when there were an estimated 14,200 homicides in the United States. This means
that homicides have increased over time.
Interestingly, where you live may determine whether you perceive that homicide is a frequently occurring crime. This is based on a social psychology concept called the availability
heuristic. The availability heuristic refers to the likelihood that individuals overestimate the
prevalence of certain events based on how easily these events come to mind. For example,
the UCR shows that nearly half of all murders in the United States in 2017 were committed
in the South (see Table 8.1). Therefore, in southern states, the news media frequently reports
stories of homicides, given that the majority of murders occur in that part of the country. The
availability heuristic predicts that individuals who live in the South will be more prone to
overestimate the prevalence of homicides than individuals in the Northeast, where the homicide rate is much lower.
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Section 8.3
Categories, Definitions, and Statistics of Homicide
Table 8.1: Offense and population percentage distribution by U.S. region, 2017
Region
U.S. total*
Northeast
Midwest
South
West
Population
100.0
17.3
20.9
38.0
23.8
100.0
11.3
22.6
45.9
20.2
Violent crime
Murder and nonnegligent
manslaughter
Rape
100.0
100.0
Robbery
Aggravated assault
Property crime
Burglary
Larceny-theft
Motor vehicle theft
100.0
100.0
100.0
100.0
100.0
100.0
13.4
12.4
15.3
12.9
11.4
9.1
12.6
7.3
*Because of rounding, the percentages may not add up to 100.0.
20.2
24.6
19.1
19.9
19.6
19.6
19.8
17.8
40.8
37.0
38.0
42.5
41.9
44.9
42.1
35.5
25.5
26.0
27.7
24.7
27.0
26.3
25.5
39.4
Note. Sufficient data are not available to estimate totals for arson. Therefore, no arson data are published in this table.
Source: “Table 3: Crime in the United States,” by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2018 (https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s
/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-2017/tables/table-3/table-3.xls#overview).
8.3 Categories, Definitions, and Statistics of Homicide
The concept of murder is commonly understood, but Black’s Law Dictionary (Garner, 2014)
has a substantive and technical definition of murder that includes a clear psychological
component—the ability to form intent to commit murder. In criminal law, intent refers to
the subjective state of mind in which the perpetrator makes “a decision to bring about a
prohibited consequence” (R. v. Mohan, 1994). Specifically, the definition includes language
referring to the perpetrator’s mental state, such as “of sound mind and discretion,” and
“deliberate action” (Garner, 2014, p. 1170) to describe the perpetrator’s goal of causing lifeending harm to the victim. The existence of these psychological and behavioral elements
are components of determining whether the murder constitutes criminal homicide, murder that contains the element of intent to cause the death of another and is considered
neither excusable nor justifiable, such as in Jessica Colpitts’s case.
The legal system further classifies criminal homicide into subtypes of murder, generally broken down into “degrees,” such as first-, second-, and third-degree murder (or manslaughter).
These subtypes are related to the perpetrator’s mental state and are influenced by the perceived heinousness of the murder. The classification system used by authorities to categorize types of homicides and perpetrators is in place for the purpose of record keeping and
reporting. This facilitates ease of research in terms of analyzing whether there is something
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Categories, Definitions, and Statistics of Homicide
Section 8.3
fundamentally different from a behavioral and psychological perspective between individuals who, for example, commit first- or third-degree murder or between serial killers and mass
murderers.
First-Degree Murder
First-degree murder, also known as premeditated murder, refers to the unlawful killing of
another that must have the intentional element of malice aforethought (Garner, 2014). Malice aforethought refers to the intent to cause significant harm to another. Premeditation
refers to planning, but it does not necessarily require a significant amount of time to form a
plan. Premeditation can occur in an instant, according to the law in most states. The seriousness of first-degree murder is such that the punishment may be as serious as the death penalty or life in prison, depending on the jurisdiction in which the murder took place. In the case
study at the beginning of the chapter, Jessica Colpitts was found guilty of first-degree murder
in the death of Samantha Fignani. The jury found that Colpitts willfully, and with malice aforethought, intended to cause Fignani harm by ending her life with the shotgun she brought to
Fignani’s home when Colpitts confronted her about the affair.
One type of first-degree murder is felony homicide. Felony homicide, or a homicide that
occurs during the commission of another felony, occurs as a form of instrumental aggression.
You will recall from Chapter 6 that instrumental aggression is “cool” aggression and occurs as
a means to an end. In felony homicide, the central goal of the perpetrator is typically to obtain
criminally some reward, such as cash, objects, or other desired goods possessed by another
person. The violent behavior is a means to obtain that goal. In the context of law, felony homicide is generally conceptualized as premeditated, first-degree murder.
Second-Degree Murder
Second-degree murder is commonly thought of as “depraved heart/mind” murder. The legal
definition used in most states for second-degree murder reveals the mental state underlying and driving the deadly form of human behavior with the use of words such as “depraved
mind,” “depraved heart,” and “reckless disregard” for the life of another. Though very serious
because it is an intentional killing, it lacks the first-degree murder element of premeditation
(Garner, 2014). Second-degree murder is punishable by life in prison in many jurisdictions,
but the judge may opt to sentence the perpetrator to a term of years instead of a life sentence.
One type of second-degree murder is altercation homicide. Altercation homicide occurs as
a result of hostile aggression. Recall from Chapter 6 that hostile aggression is “hot” aggression—that is, an impulsive reaction motivated by anger in response to the actual or perceived
aggressive behavior of the provocateur. The underlying motivation behind hostile aggression
is to cause harm, including homicide. In the context of the law, altercation homicide can best
be conceptualized as “heat of passion,” second-degree murder.
See Case Study: Josiah Hadley to read about how homicide charges take into consideration the
psychological functioning leading up to and at the time of the crime.
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Categories, Definitions, and Statistics of Homicide
Section 8.3
Case Study: Josiah Hadley
Griselle Martinez was just 22 years old when she was killed by her boyfriend, 24-year-old
Josiah Hadley. Martinez and Hadley were out with friends when they began arguing. The couple returned home, and as the evening wore on, the argument escalated to a physical altercation. A friend who was at their apartment when the physical altercation took place told police
that he saw Hadley over Martinez’s body, punching her. Hadley and his friends rushed Martinez to the hospital, where she died.
Hadley, his parents, and Martinez’s family were grief stricken. This was not something they
ever imagined was possible, given that Hadley was described by everyone who knew him as a
kind, caring, deeply religious, and responsible young man. Nevertheless, at trial the jury found
that Hadley killed Martinez with a depraved mind (i.e., showing no regard for human life;
second-degree murder). The jury believed that as the argument continued for hours, Hadley
became angry and lost his ability to control his own behavior.
Third-Degree Murder
Third-degree murder, more commonly known as manslaughter, is defined as an unintentional yet criminal homicide that lacks malice and premeditation (Garner, 2014). Manslaughter is a very serious crime because human life is lost as the direct result of the unlawful
behavior of another. However, in manslaughter the perpetrator has significantly less culpability than in first- or second-degree murder.
Manslaughter has two major categories: voluntary manslaughter and involuntary manslaughter.
Voluntary Manslaughter
Voluntary manslaughter is a “heat of passion” murder that lacks intent to commit murder
(Garner, 2014). The most commonly used example of voluntary manslaughter is that of a
spouse who arrives home unexpectedly to find the other spouse having an affair and “in the
heat of passion” murders the spouse and/or the paramour.
The “heat of passion” may also be present in non–love triangle cases, such as that of Diana
Lalchan, who shot her controlling and abusive husband, Christopher, in the back of the head
during a verbal argument. Diana feared that her husband was planning to kill her based on
the years of abuse she suffered. The state’s position was—and the jury agreed—that this was
not a case of self-defense. Christopher was not physically harming Diana at the time of the
shooting, and thus there was no imminent danger to her at that time. However, the years of
abuse influenced Diana’s perception that she was in danger, causing her to shoot Christopher.
The jury agreed that Diana had been abused by Christopher previously, yet they judged her
reaction at the time of his death as “extreme.” The jury found Diana guilty of voluntary manslaughter. That is, they found that in the “heat of the moment,” Diana killed her husband to
protect herself without malicious intent to cause him harm.
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Section 8.3
Categories, Definitions, and Statistics of Homicide
Involuntary Manslaughter
Involuntary manslaughter is an accidental murder that occurs during the commission of
an illegal act (Garner, 2014). To understand involuntary manslaughter, let’s explore the case
of Michigan state trooper Mark Bessner, whose actions led to the death of teenager Damon
Grimes. Bessner, in the passenger seat of his patrol vehicle while another officer was driving,
was in pursuit of Grimes, who was riding on an all-terrain vehicle (ATV). Bessner shot Grimes
with a Taser, leading Grimes to crash the vehicle and subsequently die. The state asserted
that Bessner shot Grimes knowing that the Taser would render Grimes unable to maintain
control of the ATV, thus potentially leading
to serious bodily harm, including death. The
jury was able to consider that Bessner had
previously improperly used his Taser on a
handcuffed man in another case, which was
a serious violation of police department
policy. Bessner had been disciplined by the
police department for that incident.
In this case, the jury found that Bessner did
not intend to kill Grimes but that his habit of
using his Taser unlawfully led directly to the
death of Grimes. They rendered a verdict of
guilty of involuntary manslaughter.
LIVINUS/iStock/Getty Images Plus
Involuntary manslaughter, such as killing
someone during a car accident, is an example
of an accidental murder.
Determining Mental State
The key element that distinguishes between the four major legal categories of murder we
have covered so far is the perpetrator’s psychological or mental state at the time just prior
to, during, and sometimes even after the commission of a homicide. It is important to understand that in the criminal justice system, each victim is considered a distinct and separate
count of murder, regardless of the type of murder the state charges. In other words, regardless of the total number of victims a perpetrator murders, each of those victims is treated as
an individual crime. Thus, if the perpetrator’s mental state varies such that malice, premeditation, and intent are different for each victim, then the type of murder charge will reflect that.
For example, in a convenience store robbery in which the perpetrator kills a bystander and
the clerk, each victim would be treated as a separate murder count, and thus there would be
two murder charges. The perpetrator may face a first-degree murder charge for planning to
rob the store and kill the clerk but perhaps a second-degree murder charge for killing the
bystander if the perpetrator did not plan to kill the second person at the scene.
Justifiable Homicide
Not all murders are deemed criminal. Justifiable homicide, described as killing someone out
of necessity, occurs because the victim perceives that he or she must defend him- or herself
from certain death.
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Section 8.4
Serial Killers, Mass Murderers, and Spree Killers
Consider the case of Ethan Gratton, who shot and killed his friend in self-defense after the
friend and another man assaulted Gratton during an argument. The men punched Gratton
so hard that he lost a tooth and suffered a concussion and a broken nose. In the middle of
the attack, Gratton pulled his gun from his pocket and shot both men, killing his friend. The
other man survived. The state prosecuted Gratton because it believed he formed the intent
to kill. That is, the state’s position was that Gratton premeditated his friend’s death. The jury
disagreed and acquitted Gratton at trial. Although the friend died by Gratton’s hand, the jury
found that Gratton was justified in shooting the men in order to defend himself from further
injury, including his own death.
8.4 Serial Killers, Mass Murderers, and Spree Killers
Additional murder classifications based on features of the crime scene or scenes have been
identified. These are serial killers and mass murderers. Serial killers and mass murderers are
generally charged with a single count of first-degree murder for each individual victim. The
number of first-degree murder cases the defendant faces depends on how many victims there
were in total. The distinguishing characteristic between a mass murderer and a serial killer is
the elapsed time between murders.
Additionally, it is worth noting that while less than 2% of all violent crimes are homicides,
serial murder is extremely rare, accounting for less than 1% of all homicides (FBI, 2008).
Serial Killer
The FBI classifies a serial killer as a single perpetrator who murders three or more people on
separate occasions. The temporal separation between murders is often referred to as a coolingoff period. For a historical example of a serial killer, see Case Study: Clementine Barnabet.
Case Study: Clementine Barnabet
In January 1911 Louisiana authorities were notified of a horrific discovery that included three
obvious homicides. There was a couple and their young son lying in bed together. Police reports
stated that it was an incredibly gruesome scene in which the family of three had suffered massive head injuries, leaving them barely recognizable. Also found at the scene was a bucket full of
blood and a bloody ax. Newspaper reporters called the crime the most brutal they had ever seen,
but it was not the last. Ax murders continued throughout 1911 and 1912 in parts of Louisiana
and neighboring Texas. Police investigated several different men for the murders and eventually
arrested Raymond Barnabet, who was a local sharecropper with a criminal record for relatively
minor crimes.
Raymond Barnabet, by all accounts, was not a good man. He was controlling, possessive, and
abusive toward his wife and two children, Clementine and Zepherin. Clementine, approximately
17 years old, was happy to talk to police about a night that her father arrived home wearing
blood-soaked clothing. She told them that Raymond had threatened to kill her if she revealed this
information to anyone. At trial, both Clementine and her brother testified against their father.
(continued)
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Section 8.4
Serial Killers, Mass Murderers, and Spree Killers
Case Study: Clementine Barnabet (continued)
However, while Raymond was in jail and his case was working its way through the legal system,
another ax murder took place. Once again, the murder claimed the lives of an entire family, but
because Raymond was in jail, he was effectively ruled out as the culprit. Police were already
suspicious of Clementine because they had found blood on women’s clothing that was hanging
in Clementine’s room when they arrested her father. Clementine asserted that her father had
wiped the blood on her clothing, but police investigators could not verify that Clementine had
an alibi for the evening of the most recent ax murder.
Police arrested Clementine and discovered through her confession that she had killed 35 people over approximately a one-and-a-half-year period. According to police, Clementine killed
these families because she believed that doing so would give her supernatural powers. The
media suggested that the murders were part of a voodoo ritual that Clementine and “many
others,” who were never identified, were involved in. They also suggested that Clementine
was a high priestess in a religious cult called the Church of Sacrifice. (The existence of such a
church has never been confirmed.) However, it is possible that this part of the story was fabrication based on the racial and class biases of that era, given that Clementine was an African
American woman in the Deep South during a time in history when African Americans’ rights
were limited through use of curfews, segregation, and other restrictions under the doctrine
that deemed African Americans “separate but equal.” The media may have been creating stories that took advantage of Clementine.
In Clementine’s case, she murdered entire families (multiple victims) at each crime scene, and
she was classified as a serial killer because there was a temporal separation between each set
of murders. That is, Clementine murdered, then some time passed, then she murdered again,
and so on until she was arrested.
Mass Murderer
Mass murder occurs when there are multiple victims (at least four) in a single location,
with no subsequent murder events because the murderer is typically captured or killed
before he or she can do any additional harm (FBI, 2008). Perhaps the most salient type of
mass murderer in recent history is that of
the mass shooter.
The deadliest mass shooting in the United
States to date is the Las Vegas massacre on
October 1, 2017, that claimed 58 lives. The
shooter, Stephen Paddock, killed himself
on the scene. The Pulse Nightclub shooting
perpetrated by Omar Mateen in Orlando,
Florida, on June 12, 2016, claimed 49 lives
and is the second most deadly mass murder in U.S. history to date.
However, mass murderers do not always
kill dozens of people in public places. See
Case Study: John List for another example
of who can be considered a mass murderer.
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department/Associated Press
The interior of Stephen Paddock’s room at
Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada,
where Paddock fired on attendees of a nearby
music festival.
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Serial Killers, Mass Murderers, and Spree Killers
Section 8.4
Case Study: John List
In 1971 New Jersey accountant John List shot and killed his family of five, including his wife,
a teenage daughter, two teenage sons, and his own mother. It was weeks before neighbors
became concerned that they had not seen anyone entering or leaving the home and reported it
to police. When police entered the home, they heard loud organ music playing over the home’s
intercom system. In addition to discovering the five victims in the home, police also discovered
a five-page letter that List wrote to his pastor stating that he perpetrated the murders because
he “had seen too much evil in the world” and wanted to save the souls of his family members.
Between the murders and the police entering the home, List changed his identity to avoid
being found. He changed his name to Robert Clark and started a new life in Virginia, where he
lived quietly for approximately 18 years. In 1989 the FBI broadcast List’s case on a television
show called America’s Most Wanted, asking for the public’s assistance in locating John List.
A woman in Virginia called the tip line and reported that her neighbor, Robert Clark, looked
remarkably similar to the age-progressed image shown to viewers.
Thanks to the tip, the FBI finally captured List, who was working as an accountant, had remarried, and was active in his local church. At trial, the jury found List guilty of five counts of
murder, and he received five separate life sentences, one for each of the victims. List later
stated that he killed his family instead of himself because he feared that suicide would prevent
him from going to Heaven, where he was hoping to be reunited with the family members he
murdered.
Although List fatally shot his victims and this is the mode of death in many all-too-familiar
mass murder cases, he carried out the crime in the privacy of his own home instead of a public
venue. Nevertheless, List fits the FBI definition of mass murderer because he killed five people
in a single location with no cooling-off period between the murders. Moreover, there is no evidence that List committed any subsequent murders at any other location.
Spree Killer
Though the FBI murder classification system no longer uses the term spree killer, the media
sometimes still refers to these types of killers, which is why we’re discussing it here. Spree
killer was defined as someone who murders multiple people over a short time period but
in different geographic locations with no cooling-off period between murders. However, the
FBI received much criticism about the arbitrary definition of a cooling-off period (FBI, 2008).
Therefore, the FBI stopped using the term in 2005, deciding that spree killers were actually
serial killers whose murders may occur with little to no break between them.
To help explain why there was the third category in the first place, the example of Dwight
Lamon Jones may be helpful. In 2018 Jones went on a murderous rampage, killing six victims
in three Arizona cities over a 5-day period before killing himself. All the victims were professionals who were either directly or indirectly involved in Jones’s divorce proceedings years
earlier. It is important to note that, even though prior to 2005 he would have been considered
a spree killer, in the context of the current FBI murder classification typology, Jones’s category
is serial killer because his homicides took place over a short time period.
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Section 8.5
Family Violence
8.5 Family Violence
According to the UCR, in most of the 15,129 murders that were solved in the United States in
2017, the perpetrators were known to the victim either as an acquaintance or family member,
with only 9.7% of the cases being committed by a stranger (FBI, 2018). This indicates that
family and intimate partner violence are a leading cause of death by homicide. Figure 8.1
shows homicide victims by relationship to the perpetrator.
Figure 8.1: Homicide victims by their relationship
In this figure, the bar graphs and pie chart visually represent the relationships of the 15,129 murder
victims to their offenders in 2017.
Family
110
Husband
549
Wife
Mother
169
Father
186
Unknown
7,557 victims
Family
1,867 victims
50.0%
12.3%
253
Son
9.7%
179
Daughter
28.0%
98
Brother
27
Sister
Other known
4,236 victims
296
Other family
0
100
200
300
400
500
Stranger
1,469 victims
600
Other known
2,999
Acquaintance
431
Friend
181
Boyfriend
488
Girlfriend
114
Neighbor
Employee
17
Employer
6
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
From “UCR Supplemental Homicide Data 2017,” by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, n.d. (https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the
-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-2017/topic-pages/expanded-homicide).
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Section 8.5
Family Violence
Family violence is the umbrella term for any type of family violence in which there are a
small but significant number of family members who are emotionally or physically abused
or killed at the hands of another member of the family. These can include intimate partner
violence, familicide, filicide, and parricide.
It is difficult to get accurate data on the prevalence of the latter three types of homicides, perhaps because they are so rare and are not necessarily distinguished from other types of family
violence when the data are collected and recorded.
Intimate Partner Violence
According to the National Coalition Against
Domestic Violence (NCADV; 2019), approximately 10 million people annually experience intimate partner violence. Intimate
partner violence (previously known as
domestic violence) is the deliberate intimidation of a romantic partner—current or
former—that can include physical, sexual,
or other violence and abusive behavior as
a means of gaining or asserting dominance
AntonioGuillem/iStock/Getty Images Plus and control over the person (NCADV, 2019).
Physical or sexual intimidation of a romantic
Intimate partner violence is an all-inclusive
partner is known as intimate partner violence.
term meant to update the term domestic
Left unchecked, this can lead to intimate
violence to include same-sex partners and
partner homicide.
others who may or may not be married or
residing in the same household. This abuse
is frequently systematic with varying degrees of severity. That is, for some victims the abuse
is psychological and emotional, never resulting in physical injury. For others the abuse is
physical, leading to injury and possibly even death.
The NCADV (2019) reports that, on average, 1 in 3 female murder victims are killed by an
intimate partner, in contrast to 1 in 20 male victims who are killed by an intimate partner.
Nearly half of all female homicide victims are killed by a current intimate partner or a former partner, with approximately 10% of these homicide victims experiencing violence at the
hands of their murderer in the 30 days prior to being killed (Petrosky et al., 2017). However,
intimate partners were not the only individuals murdered in at least some of these homicide
cases. Approximately 20% of all murder victims were friends, family, and/or acquaintances
of domestic violence victims and were murdered because they were somehow related to or
intervened on behalf of the victim (NCADV, 2019).
See Case Study: Robert McCoy to read about a case in which intimate partner violence led to
multiple homicides.
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Section 8.5
Family Violence
Case Study: Robert McCoy
Yolanda McCoy separated from her controlling and abusive husband, Robert McCoy, in 2008.
One day as she arrived home
