ABSTRACT
When a parent commits infanticide or filicide, it is much easier to accuse him or her of murder (there is no denying that there was a living child) than it is to accuse the perpetrator of neonaticide, a crime that may not exist in a state’s statutes or in the minds of legislators or jurists. However, what is murder? In many states, first-degree murder means that one person killed another willfully, deliberately, and with premeditation (Ford, 1996). In other states, there is a common-law definition of murder as “the killing of another with malice aforethought,” as distinguished from manslaughter, which involves unlawful killing without malice (Ford, 1996, p. 531).
