library(readr)
library(ggplot2)
library(kableExtra)
library(dplyr)
library(forcats)
library(here)
library(leaflet)
library(tigris)
load(file = here("data-outputs", "WA940.rda"))
# Select homicides
# Remove suicides and some final cases that don't belong
## 25804-5 are the Tad Norman case in Lake City.
## Not victims of police violence.
## they were killed by Norman
homicides <- finaldata_940 %>%
filter(circumstances.fe != "Suicide" &
feID != 28698 & #deputy crash while having stroke
feID != 25804 & #next 2 killed by suspect, not police
feID != 25805) %>%
arrange(date)
last.date <- max(homicides$date)
total.incidents <- dim(homicides)[1]
LegDists <- read_csv(here::here("data-raw", "LegDists2_17_2021.csv"))
reps_2021 <- read_csv(here::here("data-raw", "WA_Representatives.csv"))
senators_2021 <- read_csv(here::here("data-raw", "WA_Senators.csv"))
# House and Senate districts are the same, just need one
leg_dists <- LegDists %>%
rename(District = `State Legislative District House`) %>%
mutate(District = as.numeric(gsub("State House District ","", District))) %>%
select(feID, District)
# 2 Reps per district
reps1 <- reps_2021 %>%
filter(Position==1) %>%
select(District, Rep1 = Representative, rep1_elec_yr = `First elected`)
reps2 <- reps_2021 %>%
filter(Position==2) %>%
select(District, Rep2 = Representative, rep2_elec_yr = `First elected`)
# 1 Senator per district
sens <- senators_2021 %>%
select(District, Senator, sen_elec_yr = `First elected`,
Location = `Counties represented`)
# Data frame for districts with at least one DFI
ldDF <- left_join(homicides, leg_dists) %>%
left_join(sens) %>%
left_join(reps1) %>%
left_join(reps2)
# Data frame for districts with no DFIs
noDFI <- data.frame(District = setdiff(1:49, unique(ldDF$District)))
ldNoDFI <- left_join(noDFI, sens) %>%
left_join(reps1) %>%
left_join(reps2) %>%
mutate(`Number of Deaths` = 0)
# Add column with DFI count by district
base_tbl <- ldDF %>%
add_count(District) %>%
arrange(District, desc(date))
# Read in state legislative boundary file for map
# Note lower and upper house share the same district boundaries
## only needs to be done once
## leg <- state_legislative_districts("Washington", "lower", cb = TRUE)After winning over 60% of the statewide vote, Initiative 940 was passed into WA state law on December 6, 2018. This report tracks the number of persons killed by police in WA state since that date, and breaks the incidents down by legislative district.
All of the data in this report come from established open-source, online resources. These data are freely available to the public, as is the software used for analyzing and hosting this report, allowing the results presented in this document to be reproduced by anyone.
There is no official comprehensive state or national data source for data on deadly force incidents in the United States. While a handful of states have centralized collection of data on these incidents, WA state is not one of them, and none of the other states make their data available to the public for download and analysis. There are, however, several crowd-sourced datasets on deadly force incidents that have been developed over the past decade, and these datasets are published online for public use.
The deadly force incident data in this report come from the Fatal Encounters project (https://fatalencounters.org/). The last data update was 2021-02-17.
Fatal Encounters is the most complete source of data on these incidents available. It is updated on a weekly basis, and it can be accessed online, by the public. Fatal Encounters includes all known deaths during encounters with police (by contrast, the Washington Post data set only includes fatal shootings by police).
This report is restricted to:
Cases that occurred after the official passage of I-940 into WA state law on December 6, 2018
Cases that can be classified as homicides by police, it excludes cases identified in the Fatal Encounters dataset as suicides, and a handful of other cases.
The Fatal Encounters dataset includes the latitude and longitude of each case. We mapped these to the WA State Legislative Districts using the free online service geocod.io.
We pulled the names of the 2021 legislators for each district from Wikipedia for the WA House of Representatives and the WA Senate
The WA State website offers a couple of easy ways to find your info on this page. You can use either:
Address Input – type in your address, click “Find My District”, and the map below will zoom into your district and display the names of your legislators.
Interactive Map – or, just click on the area of the interactive map where you live, and the info will display on a pop-up window.
This report has been produced entirely with software and services that are free for public use:
The open-source statistical software R,
The R packages and code used to produce the report can be viewed by clicking the interactive Code buttons that appear along the right margin of the document.
The Rstudio IDE.
This report is hosted by the Rpubs web-publishing service.
And all of this is made possible by the generous help and support from the online stackoverflow community.
Data science for public good.
A total of 106 people have been killed by law enforcement since I-940 was passed, 78 by gunshot.
40 of WA state’s 49 legislative districts (LDs) have had at least one deadly force incident.
This table is interactive – You can
Sort by each column using the up/down arrows next to the column name (try sorting by Number of Deaths),
Search for specific entries in any column using the Search box on the right above the table, and
Filter the table by entries in each column using the boxes below the column name.
temp_ldNoDFI <- ldNoDFI %>%
select(District, Location, Senator,
Rep1, Rep2, `Number of Deaths`)
base_tbl %>%
group_by(District) %>%
summarize(Location = first(Location),
Senator = first(Senator),
Rep1 = first(Rep1),
Rep2 = first(Rep2),
`Number of Deaths` = first(n)
) %>%
bind_rows(temp_ldNoDFI) %>%
arrange(District) %>%
DT::datatable(rownames = F,
caption = "Deadly Force Incidents since I-940 by Legislative District",
filter = 'top',
class = 'cell-border stripe',
options = list(
initComplete = JS(
"function(settings, json) {",
"$('body').css({'font-family': 'Calibri'});",
"}"
)
)
)In this table, the highlight color is scaled to the number of persons killed in that district: from light yellow (lowest), through orange and red to purple (highest).
base_tbl %>%
select(District, Area=Location, Senator, Rep1, Rep2,
`Their Name`= name, Age = age.fe,
Date = date, City = city, Agency = agency,
`Cause of Death`= cod.fe) %>%
mutate(Agency = gsub("Police Department", "PD", Agency),
Agency = gsub("County Sheriff's Office", "CSO", Agency)) %>%
group_by(District) %>%
arrange(desc(Date), .by_group=T) %>%
kbl(align = "l") %>%
kable_paper() %>%
column_spec(1, bold = T,
background = spec_color(base_tbl$n, option = "B",
begin = 0.3, end = 1,
direction = -1,
alpha = 0.65)) %>%
column_spec(6, bold = T,
background = spec_color(base_tbl$n, option = "B",
begin = 0.3, end = 1,
direction = -1,
alpha = 0.65)) %>%
collapse_rows(columns = 1:5, valign = "top") %>%
add_header_above(c("District Information" = 5,
"Incident Information" = 6))|
District Information
|
Incident Information
|
|||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| District | Area | Senator | Rep1 | Rep2 | Their Name | Age | Date | City | Agency | Cause of Death |
| 1 | King, Snohomish | Derek Stanford | Davina Duerr | Shelley Kloba | Juan Rene Hummel | 25 | 2020-07-29 | Bothell | Bothell PD | Gunshot |
| Jonathan Shoop | 32 | 2020-07-13 | Bothel | Bothell PD | Gunshot | |||||
| 2 | Pierce, Thurston | Jim McCune | Andrew Barkis | J. T. Wilcox | John Eric Ostbye | 50 | 2021-01-25 | Graham | Pierce CSO | Gunshot |
| Donald Anderson | 39 | 2020-08-09 | Graham | Pierce CSO | Gunshot | |||||
| Brandon Mark Stokes | 37 | 2020-04-07 | La Grande | Pierce CSO | Gunshot | |||||
| Sok Chin Son | 60 | 2020-01-21 | Lacey | Thurston CSO | Gunshot | |||||
| Unknown | NA | 2019-11-29 | Eatonville | Pierce CSO | Gunshot | |||||
| 3 | Spokane | Andy Billig | Marcus Riccelli | Timm Ormsby | Shawn McCoy | NA | 2021-01-05 | Spokane | Spokane PD | Gunshot |
| Nancy King | 70 | 2020-12-04 | Spokane | Spokane County Detention Services | Gunshot | |||||
| David W. Shafer | 61 | 2019-10-23 | Spokane | Spokane PD | Gunshot | |||||
| Dwight Delando Steward | 46 | 2019-01-23 | Spokane | Spokane PD | Gunshot | |||||
| David M. Novak | 35 | 2019-01-07 | Spokane | Spokane PD | Gunshot | |||||
| 4 | Mike Padden | Bob McCaslin Jr. | Rob Chase | Nicholas Cory Kausshen | 41 | 2020-11-22 | Spokane Valley | Spokane CSO | Gunshot | |
| Joshua Clayton Brant | 31 | 2020-09-11 | Spokane Valley | Spokane PD | Gunshot | |||||
| Sergey Rumyantsev | 25 | 2019-10-05 | Newman Lake | Spokane CSO | Tasered | |||||
| Collin Osborn | 38 | 2019-08-16 | Spokane Valley | Spokane CSO | Gunshot | |||||
| Ethan Austin Murray | 25 | 2019-05-04 | Spokane Valley | Spokane CSO | Gunshot | |||||
| 5 | King | Mark Mullet | Bill Ramos | Lisa Callan | Anthony Chilcott | 36 | 2019-11-22 | Enumclaw | King CSO | Gunshot |
| 6 | Spokane | Jeff Holy | Mike Volz | Jenny Graham | Erik "“Ace”" Mahoney | 43 | 2020-09-24 | Spokane | Spokane PD | Gunshot |
| Clando Anitok | 25 | 2020-01-10 | Town and Country | Spokane CSO | Gunshot | |||||
| 7 | Ferry, Okanogan, Pend Oreille, Spokane, Stevens | Shelly Short | Jacquelin Maycumber | Joel Kretz | Ryan E. Bass | 39 | 2020-03-03 | Riverside | Okanogan CSO, Omak PD | Gunshot |
| Unknown | NA | 2019-06-07 | Malo | Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife | Gunshot | |||||
| 8 | Benton | Sharon Brown | Brad Klippert | Matt Boehnke | Reno E. Casanova | 25 | 2020-12-15 | Kennewick | Kennewick PD | Asphyxiated/Restrained |
| Unknown | 40 | 2020-04-03 | Kennewick | Kennewick PD | Gunshot | |||||
| Gordon L. Whitaker | 45 | 2020-02-09 | Kennewick | Kennewick PD | Gunshot | |||||
| Jose "“Joey”" Mercado | 48 | 2019-01-20 | Richland | Richland PD | Tasered | |||||
| 9 | Adams, Asotin, Franklin, Garfield, Spokane, Whitman | Mark Schoesler | Mary Dye | Joe Schmick | Shawn Lee | 48 | 2020-04-12 | Ritzville | Ritzville PD | Gunshot |
| Dante Redmond Jones | 28 | 2019-11-18 | Mesa | Franklin CSO | Gunshot | |||||
| 11 | King | Bob Hasegawa | David Hackney | Steve Bergquist | River Hudson | 20 | 2020-05-06 | Renton | Renton PD | Gunshot |
| Anthony Tovar | 43 | 2019-12-12 | Renton | Renton PD | Gunshot | |||||
| Unknown | NA | 2019-10-08 | Seattle | Seattle PD | Vehicle | |||||
| 12 | Chelan, Douglas, Grant, Okanogan | Brad Hawkins | Keith Goehner | Mike Steele | Thomas M. Mathes III | 29 | 2020-04-21 | East Wenatchee | Douglas CSO | Gunshot |
| 13 | Grant, Kittitas, Lincoln, Yakima | Judith Warnick | Tom Dent | Alex Ybarra | Jose Luis Rivera | 22 | 2020-02-28 | Moses Lake | Moses Lake PD | Gunshot |
| Marcos Avalos Barrera | 29 | 2019-09-09 | Quincy | Quincy PD, Grant CSO, Moses Lake PD, Washington State Patrol | Medical emergency | |||||
| Juan Manuel Flores Del Toro | 29 | 2019-03-19 | Kittitas | Kittitas CSO | Gunshot | |||||
| 14 | Clark, Klickitat, Skamania, Yakima | Curtis King | Chris Corry | Gina Mosbrucker | Terrance Ryan | 66 | 2018-12-14 | Yakima | Yakima PD | Gunshot |
| 15 | Yakima | Jim Honeyford | Bruce Chandler | Jeremie Dufault | Seth Button | 35 | 2020-09-22 | Yakima | Washington State Patrol | Vehicle |
| Neil Sartain | 40 | 2020-09-22 | Yakima | Washington State Patrol | Vehicle | |||||
| Tiffany Alexis Eubanks | 33 | 2020-06-02 | Yakima | Yakima PD | Asphyxiated/Restrained | |||||
| Alfredo Chino | 38 | 2019-06-15 | Toppenish | Toppenish PD | Gunshot | |||||
| 16 | Benton, Columbia, Franklin, Walla Walla | Perry Dozier | Mark Klicker | Skyler Rude | Juan M. "“Scars”" Montalvo | 25 | 2020-05-17 | Pasco | Pasco PD | Gunshot |
| Alejandro Betancourt Mendoza | 18 | 2019-12-14 | Pasco | Pasco PD | Gunshot | |||||
| Samuel Gonzales | 56 | 2019-01-21 | Prosser | Benton CSO, Washington State Patrol | Tasered | |||||
| 19 | Cowlitz, Grays Harbor, Lewis, Pacific, Wahkiakum | Jeff Wilson | Jim Walsh | Joel McEntire | Justin Lee Aguilar Tofte | 33 | 2020-10-02 | Longview | Cowlitz CSO | Gunshot |
| Kristopher "“Kris”" Fitzpatrick | 41 | 2019-09-09 | Aberdeen | Aberdeen PD | Gunshot | |||||
| Christopher "“Chris”" P. Johnson | 51 | 2019-09-08 | Longview | Longview PD, Cowlitz CSO, Kelso PD | Gunshot | |||||
| Patrick E. West | 42 | 2019-04-17 | Montesano | Montesano PD | Gunshot | |||||
| 20 | Clark, Cowlitz, Lewis, Thurston | John Braun | Peter Abbarno | Ed Orcutt | Joshua Flores | 18 | 2019-06-18 | Centralia | Centralia PD | Gunshot |
| Brian Dellaann Butts | 33 | 2019-04-14 | Kalama | Cowlitz CSO | Gunshot | |||||
| Robert D. Richardson | 40 | 2019-03-03 | Glenoma | Lewis CSO | Gunshot | |||||
| 21 | Snohomish | Marko Liias | Strom Peterson | Lillian Ortiz-Self | Ryan D. Hemmingson | 44 | 2019-11-09 | Everett | Snohomish CSO | Gunshot |
| 22 | Thurston | Sam Hunt | Laurie Dolan | Jessica Bateman | Michael Forest Reinoehl | 48 | 2020-09-03 | Lacey | U.S. Marshals Service | Gunshot |
| Charles M. Taylor | 36 | 2019-07-01 | Tumwater | Lewis CSO | Medical emergency | |||||
| 23 | Kitsap | Christine Rolfes | Tarra Simmons | Drew Hansen | Stonechild Chiefstick | 39 | 2019-07-03 | Poulsbo | Poulsbo PD | Gunshot |
| 24 | Clallam, Grays Harbor, Jefferson | Kevin Van De Wege | Mike Chapman | Steve Tharinger | Bret James Moore | 56 | 2020-08-31 | Hoquiam | Grays Harbor CSO | Burned/Smoke inhalation |
| Tanya Rondon | 47 | 2020-08-31 | Hoquiam | Grays Harbor CSO | Burned/Smoke inhalation | |||||
| Jaiden Angel Jewel Good | 19 | 2019-10-10 | Elma | Washington State Patrol | Vehicle | |||||
| 25 | Pierce | Chris Gildon | Kelly Chambers | Cyndy Jacobsen | Quincy Ivan Bishop | 30 | 2020-11-01 | Puyallup | Buckley PD, Puyallup PD, Pierce CSO | Gunshot |
| Maria Teresa Magana Bedolla | 31 | 2020-04-10 | Parkland | Pierce CSO | Vehicle | |||||
| 26 | Kitsap, Pierce | Emily Randall | Jesse Young | Michelle Caldier | David James Pruitte | 36 | 2020-08-04 | Port Orchard | Kitsap CSO | Gunshot |
| 27 | Pierce | Jeannie Darneille | Laurie Jinkins | Jake Fey | Bennie Branch | 24 | 2019-09-08 | Tacoma | Tacoma PD | Gunshot |
| Hashim Jibri Wilson | 28 | 2019-07-21 | Tacoma | Tacoma PD | Gunshot | |||||
| Willem Van Spronsen | 69 | 2019-07-13 | Tacoma | Tacoma PD | Gunshot | |||||
| 29 | Steve Conway | Melanie Morgan | Steve Kirby | Said Joquin | 26 | 2020-05-01 | Lakewood | Lakewood PD | Gunshot | |
| Manuel "“Manny”" Elijah Ellis | 33 | 2020-03-03 | Tacoma | Tacoma PD | Asphyxiated/Restrained | |||||
| Curtis French | 56 | 2019-11-03 | Parkland | Pierce CSO | Gunshot | |||||
| Keith Lawrence Harvey | 43 | 2019-01-13 | Lakewood | Lakewood PD | Gunshot | |||||
| 30 | King, Pierce | Claire Wilson | Jamila Taylor | Jesse Johnson | Joshua Sarrett | 32 | 2020-09-19 | Auburn | King CSO | Gunshot |
| Malik Tejon Elijah Williams | 23 | 2019-12-31 | Federal Way | Federal Way PD | Gunshot | |||||
| Kimberly K. Winslow | 41 | 2019-11-24 | Federal Way | Federal Way PD | Vehicle | |||||
| 31 | Phil Fortunato | Eric E. Robertson | Drew Stokesbary | Nicholas Ellingson | 37 | 2020-12-17 | Auburn | Auburn PD | Gunshot | |
| Ensoa Strickland | 26 | 2019-05-20 | Auburn | Auburn PD | Gunshot | |||||
| 32 | King, Snohomish | Jesse Salomon | Cindy Ryu | Lauren Davis | Unknown | NA | 2020-09-10 | Seattle | Snohomish CSO | Vehicle |
| Aaron Gregory Olsvik | 23 | 2020-07-16 | Shoreline | King CSO | Gunshot | |||||
| Khanh Tran | 66 | 2019-01-13 | Lynnwood | Edmonds PD | Vehicle | |||||
| 33 | King | Karen Keiser | Tina Orwall | Mia Gregerson | Unknown | 25 | 2021-01-16 | Kent | Kent PD | Vehicle |
| Miguel A. Barraza Lugo | 37 | 2019-01-07 | Kent | Kent PD | Gunshot | |||||
| 35 | Kitsap, Mason, Thurston | Tim Sheldon | Dan Griffey | Drew C. MacEwen | Kathryn R. Hale | 32 | 2020-03-24 | Shelton | Mason CSO | Gunshot |
| 36 | King | Reuven Carlyle | Noel Frame | Liz Berry | Terry J. Caver | 57 | 2020-05-19 | Seattle | Seattle PD | Gunshot |
| Ryan Matthew Smith | 31 | 2019-05-08 | Seattle | Seattle PD | Gunshot | |||||
| 37 | Rebecca Saldana | Sharon Tomiko Santos | Kirsten Harris-Talley | Gregory Taylor | 45 | 2021-02-09 | Seattle | Seattle PD | Gunshot | |
| Su Thin Sang | 54 | 2020-09-11 | Seattle | Seattle PD | Vehicle | |||||
| Sy Ly Kiu | 54 | 2020-09-11 | Seattle | Seattle PD | Vehicle | |||||
| Shaun Lee Fuhr | 24 | 2020-04-29 | Columbia City | Seattle PD | Gunshot | |||||
| Mantry Norris | 20 | 2019-06-15 | Renton | Renton PD | Gunshot | |||||
| 38 | Snohomish | June Robinson | Emily Wicks | Mike Sells | Helen Reeder | 97 | 2020-08-29 | Marysville | Marysville PD | Vehicle |
| Sudin Self Johnson | 25 | 2020-08-29 | Marysville | Marysville PD | Vehicle | |||||
| Colin A. C. Wehmeyer | 39 | 2019-11-14 | Everett | Everett PD | Tasered | |||||
| 40 | San Juan, Skagit, Whatcom | Liz Lovelett | Debra Lekanoff | Alex Ramel | Joseph Dorn | 34 | 2019-03-20 | Mount Vernon | Mount Vernon PD | Tasered |
| 43 | King | Jamie Pedersen | Nicole Macri | Frank Chopp | Travis Berge | NA | 2020-09-18 | Seattle | Seattle PD | Drowned |
| 45 | Manka Dhingra | Roger Goodman | Larry Springer | Ronny Dunning | 22 | 2020-11-09 | Woodinville | King CSO | Gunshot | |
| Derek Antonio Sanchez | 35 | 2019-07-13 | Kirkland | Kirkland PD | Gunshot | |||||
| 46 | David Frockt | Gerry Pollet | Javier Valdez | Elliott Yearby | 29 | 2019-12-16 | Seattle | Seattle PD | Vehicle | |
| Danny Rodriguez | 34 | 2019-02-07 | Seattle | Seattle PD | Gunshot | |||||
| Iosia Faletogo | 36 | 2018-12-31 | Seattle | Seattle PD | Gunshot | |||||
| 47 | Mona Das | Debra Entenman | Pat Sullivan | Darren A. Butrick | 60 | 2020-11-04 | Kent | Kent PD | Gunshot | |
| Sergey Pavlovich | 18 | 2019-06-28 | Kent | Kent PD | Vehicle | |||||
| Jesse Sarey | 26 | 2019-05-31 | Auburn | Auburn PD | Gunshot | |||||
| 48 | Patty Kuderer | Vandana Slatter | Amy Walen | Andrea Churna | 39 | 2020-09-20 | Redmond | Redmond PD | Gunshot | |
| 49 | Clark | Annette Cleveland | Sharon Wylie | Monica Stonier | Jenoah Donald | 30 | 2021-02-04 | Hazel Dell | Clark CSO | Gunshot |
| Kevin E. Peterson | 21 | 2020-10-29 | Vancouver | Clark CSO | Gunshot | |||||
| Andrew A. Williams | 41 | 2020-10-04 | Vancouver | Vancouver PD | Gunshot | |||||
| William E. Abbe | 50 | 2020-04-28 | Vancouver | Vancouver PD | Gunshot | |||||
| Carlos Markein Hunter | 43 | 2019-03-07 | Hazel Dell South | Vancouver PD | Gunshot | |||||
| Michael Eugene Pierce | 29 | 2019-02-28 | Vancouver | Vancouver PD | Gunshot | |||||
| Clayton Joseph | 16 | 2019-02-19 | Vancouver | Vancouver PD | Gunshot | |||||
The circled numbers on this map represent the number of persons killed by law enforcement in that area. Circle color represents higher (orange) or lower (green) values.
Hovering over the number will show the outline of the area covered,
Clicking the number will zoom into that area, and show the map pointers for each person killed.
The blue pointers show the location of each person killed.
Hovering over the pointer brings up the name, age and date of the person killed, the agency of the officer who killed them and the WA legislative district information;
Clicking the pointer will bring up a url to a news article on the case.
The legislative district boundaries are marked in black.
labs <- lapply(seq(nrow(base_tbl)), function(i){
paste0( '<p>', base_tbl[i,"name"],
", age ", base_tbl[i,"age.fe"],
", on ", base_tbl[i,"date"],
'<p></p> by ', base_tbl[i,"agency"],
'<p></p> WA Legislative District ', base_tbl[i,"District"],
'<p></p> (S ', base_tbl[i,"Senator"],
", R1 ", base_tbl[i,"Rep1"],
", R2 ", base_tbl[i,"Rep2"], ")",
'</p>' )
})
#leg <- state_legislative_districts("WA", year = "2019", cb = TRUE)
map <- leaflet(leg, width = "100%") %>%
addTiles() %>%
addMarkers( ~ base_tbl$longitude,
~ base_tbl$latitude,
popup = ~ base_tbl$url_info,
label = lapply(labs, htmltools::HTML),
clusterOptions = markerClusterOptions()) %>%
addPolygons(fillColor = "honeydew",
color = "black",
weight = 1)
mapThe deadly force incidents in this report are homicides. A homicide is simply defined as the killing of one person by another. In the context of this report it refers to any encounter with law enforcement officers that results in a fatality. Homicides normally result in a criminal investigation or inquest, but the word does not imply a crime has been committed.
The word homicide means only that the death was caused in some way by the officer.
It does not not mean the officer’s actions that led to the death were justified, or that they were unjustified.
There are many different types of homicides. In the U.S., these types and definitions vary across states, but there are some general similarities. The definitions below are taken from a useful online summary found here, based on California State laws.
Homicide
Homicide is the killing of one person by another. This is a broad term that includes both legal and illegal killings. For example, a soldier may kill another soldier in battle, but that is not a crime. The situation in which the killing happened determines whether it is a crime.
Murder is the illegal and intentional killing of another person. Under California Penal Code Section 187, for example, murder is defined as one person killing another person with malice aforethought. Malice is defined as the knowledge and intention or desire to do evil. Malice aforethought is found when one person kills another person with the intention to do so.
In California, for example, a defendant may be charged with first-degree murder, second-degree murder, or capital murder.
First-degree murder is the most serious and includes capital murder – first-degree murder with “special circumstances” that make the crime even more egregious. These cases can be punishable by life in prison without the possibility of parole, or death.
Second-degree murder is murder without premeditation, but with intent that is typically rooted in pre-existing circumstances. The penalty for second-degree murder may be up to 15 years to life in prison in California.
Felony murder is a subset of first-degree murder and is charged when a person is killed during the commission of a felony, such as a robbery or rape.
Manslaughter is the illegal killing of another person without premeditation, and in some cases without the intent to kill. These cases are treated as less severe crimes than murder. Manslaughter can also be categorized as voluntary or involuntary.
Voluntary manslaughter occurs when a person kills another without premeditation, typically in the heat of passion. The provocation must be such that a reasonable person under the same circumstances would have acted the same way. Penalties for voluntary manslaughter include up to 11 years in prison in California.
Involuntary manslaughter is when a person is killed by actions that involve a wanton disregard for life by another. Involuntary manslaughter is committed without premeditation and without the true intent to kill, but the death of another person still occurs as a result. Penalties for involuntary manslaughter include up to four years in prison in California.
Vehicular manslaughter occurs when a person dies in a car accident due to another driver’s gross negligence or even simple negligence, in certain circumstances.