Homicide

• Author: Hy Bloom
• Pages: 569-612

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CHAPTER 27

Homicide

Hy Bloom

I. INTRODUCTION

Killing, sad ly, is seemingly an inextricable dimension of the human condition and a pre-eminent feature

of human history, to the extent that killings have throughout time not only inuenced the course of history,

but are interwoven into its fabric.

Homicides are committed by virtually every category of person — young and old, related and stranger,

immoral and prosocial, normal and mentally ill, males and females, rich and poor, and by members of

every race, ethnicity, and religion. Homicides are committed for a multiplicity of reasons — utilitarian and

material, ideological, expediency, self-preservation, vengeance — and in a wide range of emotional states.

Simon (2006) notes in his foreword to Malmquist’s well-known work on homicide that homicide is

virtually an everyday matter for member of the public, who are regularly exposed to it, in one form or

another, through local television and newspaper reports, and various other media, which are “replete

with homicide depictions.” Simon captures the public’s interest well when he describes people as “both

fascinated and appalled by humanity’s dark side.” He describes their interest in murder as “derive[d]

from a deep dark sense that the capacity for murder is quintessentially human.”

Dierent theories have been suggested for how to account for the phenomenon of homicide. Does

the fact of its existence and extent speak to evolutionary theory and history — survival and selection

(Jones, 2008) — or social circumstances — the declining disparity between the “haves and the have-

nots”? Eisner (2001), in fact, suggests an evening-up of resources is a key reason for declining homicide

rates through the centuries.

As simple as an act of killing may seem, Malmquist (2006a) sees killing as complex. Speaking to this,

he writes: “A person’s dynamics and psychopathology, predisposing factors of a biological and social nature,

and current environmental variables all contribute to some nal common pathway for a homicide to

occur. Too oen the complexity of these multifactorial elements is ignored.”

is chapter provides a brief overview of the subject of homicide — particularly as regards its behav-

ioural and psychological/psychiatric dimensions. It will also review some of the better-known subtypes

of homicide. e author concedes at the outset that an attempt to treat so large and detailed a subject

within such a conned space would be unrealistic. Consequently, the goal of the chapter is to provide the

reader with the broadest sense of dierent types of homicide commonly encountered in forensic psychi-

atric and psychological practice, and their features.

Dierent aspects of homicide are touched on in other chapters (for example, Chapter 14: Not Crim-

inally Responsible on Account of Mental Disorder (NCRMD); Chapter 15: Automatism; Chapter 16:

Intoxication and Capacity to Form Intent; Chapter 28: Dangerous and Long-Term Oenders; and

Chapter 55: Violence in the Workplace).

Hy Bloom

II. DEFINITIONS

Homicide occurs when a person, directly or indirectly, causes the death of another. It is either culpable

or not culpable. ere are three homicide oences in the Criminal Code of Canada: murder, infanticide,

and manslaughter. Manslaughter is a residual oence (section 234), such that culpable homicide that is

not murder or infanticide is manslaughter.

Murder, as dened in the Criminal Code (section 229), is the intentional causation of death by a

person, or the causation of bodily harm that the person knows is likely to cause death, and is reckless

whether or not death ensues. Following the abolition of the death penalty in Canada, murder has been

divided into rst and second degree.

First degree murder occurs when the killing is planned and deliberate or when the victim was a peace

ocer or when the death occurred during commission or attempted commission of certain other serious

oences such as sexual assault, kidnapping, or hijacking.

Second degree murder includes all murder that is not rst degree. Section 232 of the Criminal Code

allows for a reduction of murder to manslaughter when the elements of the defence of provocation have

been made out (see Chapter 18: Self-Defence, Provocation, Duress, and Necessity for a detailed discus-

sion of provocation).

At common law, it has generally been assumed that a person is a creature of free will. As such, he

chooses his course of action aer weighing the outcome he wishes against the foreseeable consequences

of following a course of action. Impairment of free wil l and choice and/or compromised ability to weigh

and foresee consequences or the presence of any psychopathological process with implications for crim-

inal responsibility is what oen triggers a referral to a psychiatrist.

A psychiatrist may be asked to give an opinion on the mental element or mens rea. is may refer to

the mental capacity of the accused to form the intent required or the negation of the intention through

mental disorder. Mens re a and intention to commit an act were historically referred to as malice afore-

thought. It follows, writes Blueglass (1979), from the above denition, that a person’s ability to choose

a course of action may be limited or vitiated by numerous factors or states, such as mental (or physical)

illness, cognitive limitations, age, intoxication, altercations in mental functioning, compulsion, duress,

coercion, or undue inuence. ese issues are discussed in detail in Chapters 13 through 16.

Both rst- and second-degree murder carr y life penalties, whereas manslaughter (without the use of

a rearm) and infanticide do not even have mandatory minimum penalt ies. e key distinct ion between

murder and manslaughter and infanticide is the higher requirement of subjective fault for murder, which,

at a minimum, involves the accused’s subjective knowledge that the victim would die (Roach, 2009).

Homicide 

III. HOMICIDE STATISTICS IN CANADA

e national homicide rate in Canada has generally been decreasing for nearly thir ty years and currently

stands at 1.76 per 100,000 of the population (see Figure 27.1 below). It is therefore a relatively rare occur-

rence in this country, with a total of 554 cases in 2010 (Fedorowycz, 2000).

Figure . Homicide and Attempted Murder Rate, Canada,  to 

Reprinted by permission of Statistics Canada, C anadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Uniform Crime Reporting Survey.

Reproduced from Dauvergne M, Crime Statistics in Canad a, , Statistics Canada ().

Limited theories have been oered for the declining homicide rates in Canada. Of interest, however,

Malmquist (2006a) oers a number of reasons for falling homicide rates in the United States. ese

include the aging demographic of baby boomers — they have aged beyond their most violence-prone

years, the burgeoning prison population (2 million by 2005 — fewer felons to commit killings), and a

higher victim surv ival rate due to high-technology trauma centres. Malmquist (2006a) references Levitt

and Dubner’s (2005) “ingenious and controversial” t heory of legalized abortion to explain the decline

in homicide rates. As the theory goes, legalizing abortion (in 1973, in Roe v. Wade) resulted in a marked

increase in abortions by single mothers in the mid-1970s, and thus fewer lower socio-economic, higher

risk adolescents and young adults to oend in the 1990s.

Figure 27.2 below oers a sense of where Canada stands in its homicide rate, compared to a number

of other countries.

Homicide

Attempted murder

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





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Rate per , population