Ef. Wilson et al., HOMICIDE OR SUICIDE - THE KILLING OF SUICIDAL PERSONS BY LAW-ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS, Journal of forensic sciences, 43(1), 1998, pp. 46-52
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.