Disclaimer: I only have a passing knowledge of criminal law based on Wikipedia, legal dramas and police procedurals. Vampirediaries.wikia.com was also used as a reference. The aim of this article isn’t to disparage or commend characters solely for their criminal homicides or lack thereof.

On trial: Caroline murders Carter — but is she guilty of the crime?

Vampires in the media used to be unsympathetic, faceless monsters in conflict with the hero/protagonist. To have sympathetic villain vampires or vampire protagonists, the vampire characters need to be fleshed out and conflict shifted to internal conflicts or intervampire conflicts. One type of conflict deals with attitudes towards killing. There’s a lot of killing on The Vampire Diaries. Vampire on vampire, vampire on human, vampire on werewolf, vampire on hybrid, human on vampire, and even human on human! All werevolves (and hybrids) have killed at least one person. Most would agree that killing is illegal because killing is wrong and/or society couldn’t exist if murder was legal.

Homicide is a legal term. Homicide means the death of a human caused by a human. There are criminal and non-criminal homicides. The killing of an enemy combatant in the theater of war or the justified use of deadly force by a police officer is a non-criminal homicide. Justification defenses for homicide (e.g self-defense) seek to avoid liability. Excuse defenses acknowledge liability but excuse it due to personal defiencies such as age or insanity. Vampires have hunted werewolves to near extinction but that doesn’t justify killing random vampires. Vampires have killed many humans but that doesn’t justify killing random vampires. Werewolf/hybrid bites are lethal to vampires but that doesn’t justify killing random werewolves/hybrids. I think it would be fun and informative to consider and categorize the homicides in the series.

Let’s change the definition of homicide to the permanent death of a person caused by another person (excluding turning and coming back as a ghost). Personicide sounds silly. Among each of these groups there are individuals who don’t consider other groups or members thereof as persons. However, I’m going to consider all characters (besides ghosts) as persons and equal under the law. The following categories aren’t exhaustive.

Characters who have committed homicide
Damon, Stefan, Alaric, Caroline, Jeremy, John Gilbert, Rose, Harper, Logan, Mason, Tyler, Klaus, Elijah, Jules, Brady, Stevie, Liz Forbes, Ray Sutton, Paige, Giuseppe Salavatore, Katherine, Trevor, Samantha Gilbert, Matt

Characters who have committed murder
Damon, Stefan, Alaric, John Gilbert, Jeremy, Logan, Klaus, Elijah, Katherine, Trevor, Giuseppe Salvatore, Rebekah, Jules, Matt

Characters that have committed voluntary manslaughter
Caroline (?), Harper(?)

Characters that have killed while insane
Rose, Alaric, Samantha Gilbert

Characters that have killed in the defense of others
Caroline

Characters that have killed in self-defense
Tyler, Mason

Case Studies
Unnamed hybrid at Homecoming
The hybrid blocked Damon’s entrance to the Homecoming party at Lockwood Mansion. Damon ripped out his heart. Damon committed murder.

Sarah
Sarah attacked Tyler with a knife at the Masquerade Ball at Lockwood Mansion. Tyler pushed her away. Sarah hit her head and died. Tyler is not guilty on the basis of self-defense.

Carter
Carter died at the hands (teeth) of Caroline. New vampires (usually) have little to no control of their hunger. She didn’t plan on killing him. She didn’t want to kill him. She couldn’t control herself. She was out of her mind. This was a crime of passion. Caroline isn’t guilty of murder but she may or may not be guilty of voluntary manslaughter.

The two unnamed cops in the Lockwood cellar
Liz and the two cops were about to kill Stefan and Damon. As they and Liz were armed with guns that shoot wooden bullets, Caroline was in danger herself. Caroline used one as a human shield and knocked out/killed the other. Actually, I don’t even know if it was Caroline or Damon that killed the second cop. Caroline is not guilty on the basis of the defense of others.

So, Matt, Damon, and Jules have committed murder but Caroline and Harper have not. What are your thoughts?