An execution-style murder, also known as execution-style killing, a "gang style", or "kill shot" is an act of criminal murder where the perpetrator kills at close range a conscious victim who is under the complete physical control of the assailant and who has been left with no course of resistance or escape. Its name comes from such murders being similar to the usual meaning of

execution Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...

, which is the taking of life by

due process of law Due process of law is application by state of all legal rules and principles pertaining to the case so all legal rights that are owed to the person are respected. Due process balances the power of law of the land and protects the individual pers ...

. Execution-style killing is most often a live bullet to the brain or heart, and victims are sometimes killed while kneeling. The terminology may derive from the process of binding the victim and killing them at close range while conscious. Some thrill killings have variously been described as execution-style murders.

United States

An example of an execution-style murder was the 1929 St. Valentine's Day massacre in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

, where a number of assailants posed as police officers. Color of authority, however, is not a defining component of the event, as the crimes of Stanley Williams and

Dennis Rader Dennis Lynn Rader (born March 9, 1945) is an American serial killer known as BTK (an abbreviation he gave himself, for "bind, torture, kill"), the BTK Strangler or the BTK Killer. Between 1974 and 1991, he killed ten people in Wichita and Park ...

also fall into this category. The weapon involved is often a

handgun A handgun is a short- barrelled gun, typically a firearm, that is designed to be usable with only one hand. It is distinguished from a long gun (i.e. rifle, shotgun or machine gun, etc.), which needs to be held by both hands and also brac ...

Long gun A long gun is a category of firearms with long barrels. In small arms, a ''long gun'' or longarm is generally designed to be held by both hands and braced against the shoulder, in contrast to a handgun, which can be fired being held with a singl ...

s, blunt instruments,

bomb A bomb is an explosive weapon that uses the exothermic reaction of an explosive material to provide an extremely sudden and violent release of energy. Detonations inflict damage principally through ground- and atmosphere-transmitted mechan ...

s, and bladed weapons have also been used in killings labeled as execution-style, such as the 1993 murder of Bobby Kent in

Hollywood, Florida Hollywood is a city in southern Broward County, Florida, United States, located between Fort Lauderdale and Miami. As of July 1, 2019, Hollywood had a population of 154,817. Founded in 1925, the city grew rapidly in the 1950s and 1960s, and is no ...

, where Derek Kaufman delivered the fatal blow with an iron club.

References

Killings by type Terrorism tactics {{crime-stub

United States

See also

References