Updated September 20, 2024
No one at the scene that September night had any doubt someone had murdered the young man lying by the side of a country road. The round hole just right of his sternum said a bullet had killed him, but there was no gun to be seen. The coroner’s certified Samuel Algarin’s death as a homicide: another person had killed him. The District Attorney charged Algarin’s killer with murder and a judge sentenced him to life in prison without parole. All homicides are not murders, but this one was.
More examples:
A friend shot 18-year-old Daryl Perry while they were playing with a firearm they didn’t think was loaded. The coroner ruled that a homicide too. After their investigation, the D.A.’s office charged the 20-year-old shooter, a former high school football star, with involuntary manslaughter, not murder. A homicide but not a murder.
Judicial executions (capital punishment) are homicides but not murders in the eyes of the criminal justice system. A soldier’s death in battle is a homicide too, but it’s rarely a crime.
In other words,
In other words, homicide is a neutral term used by coroners and medical examiners. It simply means that the death happened because of the action of a person other than the decedent. It doesn’t denote a crime or intent to kill. That’s why all homicides are not murders.
Intent to do harm plays no role in a coroner’s decision to call a death a homicide. As pioneering forensic pathologist Dr. Milton Helpern once said, “We are not interested in whodunit, all we want to know is what did it.”
Homicide and the Murder Trial
Most people — including many jurors in homicide trials — don’t understand the distinction between the medicolegal definition of homicide and that of the criminal justice system. Criminal lawyers, both prosecutors and defense attorneys, may take advantage of that ignorance. Here’s an exchange this author experienced as a witness in a murder trial.
“What was the manner of death you put on the death certificate?” asked the Associate District Attorney.
“Homicide,” the coroner replied.
“No further questions,” said the ADA.
What should have happened next but didn’t?
This was the point in the trial where the defense attorney could have decided to specifically question the expert about the meaning and limitations of the ‘homicide’ designation, so the jury would not have assumed homicide meant the same as murder.
Time and Age Don’t Matter
A delayed homicide is when someone dies years, even decades, due to injuries inflicted by another person. Perhaps the victim was paralyzed and later died of complications like sepsis from skin or bladder infections. This is a homicide… if the coroner can find out when and where the assault took place.
What about minors?
Reports of children, even toddlers, shooting a sibling or other family member are no longer rare. These tragic cases are still homicides as far as the coroner is concerned. It’s unusual, however, for prosecutors to file first- or second-degree murder charges in such cases. For example, the District Attorney charged a Montgomery County, PA 13-year-old who shot and killed his 12-year-old sibling with third-degree murder.
“We are not interested in whodunit, all we want to know is what did it.”
Dr. Milton Helpern
How Many Homicides are there?
Pennsylvania
The lack of transparency in most Pennsylvania counties on the part of coroners and medical examiners limits what we know. According to a 2022 state survey, less than 20% of Pennsylvania’s 67 coroners post statistical data or an annual report on their website.
So what DO we know?
Pennsylvania’s Violent Death Reporting System (part of the Department of Health) has no homicide data on its website beyond 2018. However, the National Violent Death Reporting System (CDC) shows 984 homicides in the state in 2021 (most recent data).
A police dashboard claims Philadelphia had 410 homicides (no definition or source provided) in 2023, but there are no statistics on the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s website. A state crime dashboard, which relies on data from law enforcement sources, reports 960 murder and manslaughter cases in Philadelphia County in 2023.
Cause of Death: X93?
Coroners use medical terminology (words) when filling out cause of death on death certificates. But CDC has a death coding system called MedCoder which converts those words to an ICD-10 code to that terminology. A search of those codes counted as homicides includes the following examples:
- Y01: assault by pushing from a high place
- Y08: death by anthrax/terrorism
- Y04: assault by bodily force
- X85: homicidal poisoning
- X93: assault by handgun discharge
- X94.0: assault by shotgun
- X95.02: assault by paintball gun discharge
In order for national statistics to be accurate, in other words, coroners need to be specific and accurate when they choose the words they put on a death certificate!