# Contested concept: murder

_**What you are reading**: one contested-concept page in Deliberus's deliberation graph. Deliberus maps human reasoning — including claims that are contested, mistaken, or extreme — so that disagreement can be examined precisely. A claim's presence here is not an endorsement: the graph records that someone argued it, how it connects to other reasoning, and how far scrutiny has gotten. The metadata on this page describes the state of that scrutiny, not the truth of the claim._

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- **Contestedness**: semantic
- **Diagnosis**: This masks a conflict between a literal definition (biological termination of life) and a social/symbolic definition (a state act of killing, regardless of legitimacy).
- **Canonical**: `/concept/murder` (data: `/concept/murder.json`)

## Senses in use
- **Unlawful, malicious killing of a human being by a private individual.** — used in 5 claim(s)
- **Any premeditated, intentional killing of a human being, including by the state; state-sanctioned homicide.** — used in 3 claim(s)

## Claims using this term
- [Multiple studies indicate that prisoners serving sentences of life without the possibility of parole exhibit rates of violence comparable t…](/claim/claim_3867a5465c1a.md) _(sense: Any premeditated, intentional killing of a human being, including by the state; state-sanctioned homicide.)_
- [Scores of individuals who were wrongfully convicted of murder in the United States were sentenced to death.](/claim/claim_612a882e4a35.md) _(sense: Unlawful, malicious killing of a human being by a private individual.)_
- [A large body of evidence from the modern era indicates that innocent people in the United States are frequently convicted of capital crimes…](/claim/claim_7612c795e8fe.md) _(sense: Unlawful, malicious killing of a human being by a private individual.)_
- [From 1900 to the present, the United States has averaged more than four cases per year in which an entirely innocent person was convicted o…](/claim/claim_b43148fcc142.md) _(sense: Unlawful, malicious killing of a human being by a private individual.)_
- [Since 1900, an average of more than four people per year in the United States have been wrongly convicted of murder.](/claim/claim_ea474fddfeea.md) _(sense: Unlawful, malicious killing of a human being by a private individual.)_
- [State-sanctioned killings are particularly problematic when executed with premeditation and ceremony in the name of the law or the people.](/claim/claim_ebb3dec4d893.md) _(sense: Any premeditated, intentional killing of a human being, including by the state; state-sanctioned homicide.)_
- [Scores of individuals who were wrongfully convicted of murder in the United States were sentenced to death.](/claim/claim_f4589af690de.md) _(sense: Unlawful, malicious killing of a human being by a private individual.)_
- [The moral authority of the state cannot be upheld by the practice of capital punishment, which is equated to state-sanctioned murder.](/claim/claim_f53edd2da4ef.md) _(sense: Any premeditated, intentional killing of a human being, including by the state; state-sanctioned homicide.)_