HOMICIDE OR SUICIDE - THE KILLING OF SUICIDAL PERSONS BY LAW-ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS

This paper presents 15 deaths of suicidal persons in Oregon and Florid a who, by their behavior, sufficiently provoked law enforcement office rs into killing them. Four deaths were certified as suicide, one as un determined and ten as homicide. All of the deaths are individually des cribed in detail and their case characteristics are presented in a tab le. The method of study is a descriptive analysis of the case characte ristics, including 21 variables which are determined to be relevant to the classification of death. The variables were grouped into six cate gories: (a) personal information: (b) criminal behavior during the fat al incident: (c) dangerous behavior during the fatal incident; (d) tox icological data; (e) mental illness information; and (f) certification data. From the analysis, reasons for the opinions on manner of death classification are presented. All incidents were perceived as life-thr eatening to law officers, family members, or hostages. All victims wer e male except one, and all were Caucasian except two. All victims resi sted arrest and verbally threatened homicide during the fatal incident . Two-thirds of the victims took hostages. All victims possessed an ap parent handgun or other weapon (knife, iron bar). All victims posed th eir weapon and threatened others during the incident. 60% of victims a ctually used the weapon with apparent intent to inflict damage to othe rs. 40% of victims were intoxicated with alcohol but other drug-involv ement was uncommon. Seven of 15 had previous suicide attempts, 40% had medically documented psychiatric diagnoses and 60% had reasonable his torical evidence of psychiatric diagnoses, most commonly depression or substance abuse. One of the co-authors presents the case for some of the deaths to be certified as suicides, whereas two present the case f or all to be certified as homicide. A brief discussion of psychiatric issues is also presented concerning individuals who use others to comm it suicide and who may engage in dangerous and/or criminal behavior to do so. A major conclusion is that there is lack of a unified opinion on death certification procedures for individuals who have provoked la w enforcement officers to kill them. For such cases, it is recommended that professional organizations of medical examiners/coreners develop guidelines to promote consistency in death certification practices in cluding manner of death classification and selection of death certific ate wording so that ''police-assisted suicide'' may be appropriately r eported and studied.