Violent Crime Summary on Victim Precipitated Criminal Homicide

Question:-

Write Summary on victim precipitated criminal homicide Wolfgang 1957.
Response papers can include reflections, questions, critiques, or a synthesis of material

Answer:-

The article “Victim precipitated criminal homicide” is written by Martin F. Wolfgang. The paper highlights that the victim of a criminal act is often one of the major contributors to the criminal act. However, in some cases, the victim does not play any role in a criminal act such as when the victim is an innocent bystander or a pure accidental case. Apart from these cases, the victim could be one of the key precipitating causes of his/her own demise. Various theories of social interaction have been developed to analyze the extent to which a victim is responsible for his/her own demise (Wolfgang, 1957). These theories have identified that the victim plays a very significant role in conducting the act of crime. Apart from this, the law of homicide has also identified provocation by the victim as a possible reason for mitigating the offense from criminal to excusable homicide or from murder to manslaughter.

There are four prerequisites so that such reduction occurs;

1. There should be adequate provocation
2. The killing should have been in the heat of passion.
3. The killing should have followed the provocation before there had been a reasonable opportunity for the passion to cool.
4. Moreover, a causal connection should exist between provocation, the homicide act, and the heat of passion such as adultery, rape of the wife or relatives of the offender, or seduction of the juvenile daughter of the offender.

It is important to understand the victim precipitated case in order to understand the concept in a logical way. The victim precipitated case can be defined as such a case in which the victim is the first to show as well as use a deadly weapon in order to strike a blow in an alteration. In other words, it can be said that the victim is the first who commences the interplay or starts physical violence (Wolfgang, 1957).

The argument and the fact presented in the paper are highly convincing because it has been generally found that the victim starts the violence and unfortunately becomes the victim of the violence. But it does not always happen. Several cases have been reported in which the victim was innocent and he or she was not involved in any kind of violence. It has also been identified that the victim becomes the victim of a criminal act accidentally. There are several cases of an accident in which various innocent individuals have been shot dead by an armed man. But the rate of an accidental criminal act is less than the victim precipitated criminal act.

The victim precipitated criminal act could be understood by an example. A husband has beaten his wife on several occasions previously. Her wife in the present instance insists him take her to the hospital but the husband refused. It leads to a violent quarrel during which the husband slaps her several times and the wife concludes by stabbing him.