Homicide
killing of a human being by another human being
Homicide is an act in which a person causes the death of another person. A homicide requires only a volitional act, or an omission, that causes the death of another, and thus a homicide may result from accidental, reckless, or negligent acts even if there is no intent to cause harm.
Homicides can be divided into many overlapping legal categories, such as murder, manslaughter, justifiable homicide, assassination, killing in war (either following the laws of war or as a war crime), euthanasia, and capital punishment, depending on the circumstances of the death. These different types of homicides are often treated very differently in human societies; some are considered crimes, while others are permitted or even ordered by the legal system.
Criminality
Criminal homicide takes many forms, including accidental killing and murder. Criminal homicide is divided into two broad categories—murder and manslaughter—based upon the state of mind and intent of the person who commits the homicide.
A report issued by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in July 2019 documented that nearly 464,000 people around the world were killed in homicides in 2017, a number significantly in excess of the 89,000 killed in armed conflicts during the same period.
Murder
Murder is the most serious crime that can be charged following a homicide. In many jurisdictions, murder may be punished by life in prison or even capital punishment. Although categories of murder can vary by jurisdiction, murder charges fall under two broad categories, or degrees:
First degree: The premeditated, unlawful, intentional killing of another person.
The public source identifies “Homicide” as killing of a human being by another human being. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Homicide, killing and human.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q149086. The Library of Congress control number is sh85061743. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2019 and 2017.
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This entry incorporates text from “Homicide” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.