Murder Was Not A Crime

Embarking on a unique study of Roman criminal law, Judy Gaughan has developed a novel understanding of the nature of social and political power dynamics in republican government. Revealing the significant relationship between political power and attitudes toward homicide in the Roman republic, Murder Was Not a Crime describes a legal system through which families (rather than the government) were given the power to mete out punishment for murder. With implications that could modify the most fundamental beliefs about the Roman republic, Gaughan's research maintains that Roman criminal law did not contain a specific enactment against murder, although it had done so prior to the overthrow of the monarchy. While kings felt an imperative to hold monopoly over the power to kill, Gaughan argues, the republic phase ushered in a form of decentralized government that did not see itself as vulnerable to challenge by an act of murder. And the power possessed by individual families ensured that the government would not attain the responsibility for punishing homicidal violence. Drawing on surviving Roman laws and literary sources, Murder Was Not a Crime also explores the dictator Sulla's "murder law," arguing that it lacked any government concept of murder and was instead simply a collection of earlier statutes repressing poisoning, arson, and the carrying of weapons. Reinterpreting a spectrum of scenarios, Gaughan makes new distinctions between the paternal head of household and his power over life and death, versus the power of consuls and praetors to command and kill.

“Explore[s] with impressive scholarship cases of unlawful killing in the regnal period, the early and mid-republic and the post-Sullan era.” —UNRV.com Embarking on a unique study of Roman criminal law, Judy Gaughan has developed a novel understanding of the nature of social and political power dynamics in republican government. Revealing the significant relationship between political power and attitudes toward homicide in the Roman republic, Murder Was Not a Crime describes a legal system through which families (rather than the government) were given the power to mete out punishment for murder. With implications that could modify the most fundamental beliefs about the Roman republic, Gaughan’s research maintains that Roman criminal law did not contain a specific enactment against murder, although it had done so prior to the overthrow of the monarchy. While kings felt an imperative to hold monopoly over the power to kill, Gaughan argues, the republic phase ushered in a form of decentralized government that did not see itself as vulnerable to challenge by an act of murder. And the power possessed by individual families ensured that the government would not attain the responsibility for punishing homicidal violence. Drawing on surviving Roman laws and literary sources, Murder Was Not a Crime also explores the dictator Sulla’s “murder law,” arguing that it lacked any government concept of murder and was instead simply a collection of earlier statutes repressing poisoning, arson, and the carrying of weapons. Reinterpreting a spectrum of scenarios, Gaughan makes new distinctions between the paternal head of household and his power over life and death, versus the power of consuls and praetors to command and kill.

Why is it so much fun to read about death and dismemberment? In Murder Book, lifelong true-crime obsessive and New Yorker cartoonist Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell tries to puzzle out the answer. An unconventional graphic exploration of a lifetime of Ann Rule super-fandom, amateur armchair sleuthing, and a deep dive into the high-profile murders that have fascinated the author for decades, this is a funny, thoughtful, and highly personal blend of memoir, cultural criticism, and true crime with a focus on the often-overlooked victims of notorious killers.

A modern retelling of 20 sensational true crimes, No Place Like Murder reveals the inside details behind nefarious acts that shocked the Midwest between 1869 and 1950. The stories chronicle the misdeeds, examining the perpetrators' mindsets, motives, lives, apprehensions, and trials, as well as what became of them long after. True crime author Janis Thornton profiles notorious murderers such as Frankie Miller, who was fed up when her fiancé stood her up for another woman. As fans of the song "Frankie and Johnny" already know, Frankie met her former lover at the door with a shotgun. Thornton's tales reveal the darker side of life in the Midwest, including the account of Isabelle Messmer, a plucky young woman who dreamed of escaping her quiet farm-town life. After she nearly took down two tough Pittsburgh policemen in 1933, she was dubbed "Gun Girl" and went on to make headlines from coast to coast. In 1942, however, after a murder conviction in Texas, she vowed to do her time and go straight. Full of intrigue and revelations, No Place Like Murder also features such folks as Chirka and Rasico, the first two Hoosier men to die in the electric chair after they brutally murdered their wives in 1913. The two didn't meet until their fateful last night. An enthralling and chilling collection, No Place Like Murder is sure to thrill true crime lovers.

On November 8, 1985, 18-year-old Tom Odle brutally murdered his parents and three siblings in the small southern Illinois town of Mount Vernon, sending shockwaves throughout the nation. The murder of the Odle family remains one of the most horrific family mass murders in U.S. history. Odle was sentenced to death and, after seventeen years on death row, expected a lethal injection to end his life. However, Illinois governor George Ryan’s moratorium on the death penalty in 2000, and later commutation of all death sentences in 2003, changed Odle’s sentence to natural life. The commutation of his death sentence was an epiphany for Odle. Prior to the commutation of his death sentence, Odle lived in denial, repressing any feelings about his family and his horrible crime. Following the commutation and the removal of the weight of eventual execution associated with his death sentence, he was confronted with an unfamiliar reality. A future. As a result, he realized that he needed to understand why he murdered his family. He reached out to Dr. Robert Hanlon, a neuropsychologist who had examined him in the past. Dr. Hanlon engaged Odle in a therapeutic process of introspection and self-reflection, which became the basis of their collaboration on this book. Hanlon tells a gripping story of Odle’s life as an abused child, the life experiences that formed his personality, and his tragic homicidal escalation to mass murder, seamlessly weaving into the narrative Odle’s unadorned reflections of his childhood, finding a new family on death row, and his belief in the powers of redemption. As our nation attempts to understand the continual mass murders occurring in the U.S., Survived by One sheds some light on the psychological aspects of why and how such acts of extreme carnage may occur. However, Survived by One offers a never-been-told perspective from the mass murderer himself, as he searches for the answers concurrently being asked by the nation and the world.

This open access book is the culmination of many years of research on what happened to the bodies of executed criminals in the past. Focusing on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it looks at the consequences of the 1752 Murder Act. These criminal bodies had a crucial role in the history of medicine, and the history of crime, and great symbolic resonance in literature and popular culture. Starting with a consideration of the criminal corpse in the medieval and early modern periods, chapters go on to review the histories of criminal justice, of medical history and of gibbeting under the Murder Act, and ends with some discussion of the afterlives of the corpse, in literature, folklore and in contemporary medical ethics. Using sophisticated insights from cultural history, archaeology, literature, philosophy and ethics as well as medical and crime history, this book is a uniquely interdisciplinary take on a fascinating historical phenomenon.

Since the world's first Codes mankind (or the then rulers) is trying to separate, and then devise a punishment for losing one's life in someone else's fault. Even the most famous and best preserved ancient Mesopotamia Code that was found in 1902 in the Iranian city of Susa contains significant parts relating to these offenses. A long way was waiting until today's modern laws in all their complexity.Homicide offenses range from those related to negligent conduct, as in criminally negligent homicide, to heinous intent murders, like capital murder. One of the highest categories of homicide is felony murder; next to capital murder, most states consider this the most severe degrees of murder. The US federal felony-murder statute requires the government to prove that a murder occurred and then calls for a determination of the degree of the murder for sentencing purposes. The government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant acted with "malice aforethought" in order to obtain a conviction. The felony-murder statute is not, however, the only federal statute that seeks to punish a defendant for a felony-related death. These are the questions we are starting our book with. Homicide is the killing of one person by another. Every state has some type of homicide statute, but the concept behind the homicide charge evolved from common law principles. Under common law, homicide is classified in three ways including justifiable homicide, excusable homicide, and criminal homicide. Murder is a homicide crime defined as the intentional killing of one human being by another with malice aforethought. Malice aforethought is a state of mind, or intent, requirement that makes a homicide a murder. It is this state of mind that differentiates murder from other types of criminal homicide like voluntary and involuntary manslaughter.Involuntary manslaughter is defined as the unlawful killing of a human being without malice aforethought. In order to be involuntary manslaughter, the killing must have been unintentional. Different states have different definitions of or requirements for involuntary manslaughterThe phrase "degrees of murder" refers to the intent or severity of a particular murder charge. Some states define their degrees of murder numerically. Common degrees of murder include first degree murder and second degree murder. Other states place specific labels on their murder offenses, such as capital murder, murder, and justifiable homicide. Despite the label of the degree of murder, the idea is to gradually increase the punishment with the degree. The more egregious the killing, or the motive behind a killing, then the higher the degree of punishment for that type of murder charge.The Castle Doctrine is a self-defense theory which gives a homeowner the right to protect his home with the use of deadly force. The Castle Doctrine originally emerged as a common law theory. And the editors felt theneed to mention this doctrine separately.Homicide is a leading cause of childhood death in the developed world, and Most child victims of homicide are killed by a parent or step-parent and what is the role of mental illnes in those cases. This will be dealt with in chapter five. The following chapter will mention the topic of gun violence as an ongoing problem in the United States of America and the relationship between the legal availability of guns and the firearm-related homicide rate.External causes of death comprise a heterogeneous collection of events including the three major categories of suicide, homicide, and accidental death. These causes of death represent a significant proportion of potentially preventable mortality in the United States. Risk factors associated with external causes of death have been limited in the number of covariates investigated and external causes examined in chapter seven.Homicides refer to interpersonal violence. Civilian and military deaths during interstate wars, civil wars and genocides are not counted as homicides. Mid 19th century, technologies that we take for granted today had not yet been discovered or widely used in solving crime. Innovations like fingerprinting, ballistics, hair and fiber analysis, and blood evidence had not yet been developed, and crimes were solved quickly or not at all. We rememeber that time in chapter 9. In chapter 10 we explore whether or not contagion is evident in more high-profile incidents, such as school shootings and mass killings (incidents with four or more people killed).We will contine with the questions of penalty and punishment untill we reach the very end of this edition where we take on the psyhological aspect of pre murderous kindness and postmurder grief of the perpetrator themselves.

Murder by the Book? is a thorough - and thoroughly enjoyable - look at the blossoming genre of the feminist crime novel in Britain and the United States. Sally Munt asks why the form has proved so attractive as a vehicle for oppositional politics; whether the pleasures of detective fiction can be truly transgressive; and when exactly it was that the dyke detective appeared as the new super-hero for today. Along the way Munt poses some critical questions about the relations between fiction and activism, politics and representations, the writer and the reader. This will be an enticing book both for addicts of the genre and for teachers and their students.