Sympathy is a great emotion that can save many people from being victims of circumstances, including bad things like killing a man. After all, not every murder is the same. Character might not only regret what he's done, he might have been forced to kill against his will! Not for this guy, though. This killer is being punished without sympathetic considerations. The result may vary: he may face a court that announces a prison sentence (or even the death penalty) as if he didn't have any defence for this action or he may be killed by someone seeking revenge, who will not care about his reasons for killing his people. What matters is that their case had a reason to rethink about the character's fate, but it didn't change anything.
May be the case of Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse. Might also be due to the setting where All Crimes Are Equal.
Manslaughter Provocation is a Sub-Trope where the character killed someone due to provocations of his victim.
Due to the morality question of this trope, No Real Life Examples, Please!
Examples:
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Comic Books
- The Sandman (1989): Poor Orpheus, poet and seer, had been stuck as a disembodied head for centuries, unable to care for himself and forced to rely on a poor, isolated Greek family to bring him food and move him about his temple so that he can have the occasional change of scenery. When his father Oneiros came to visit him, seeking answers about where his long-lost brother had gone, Orpheus agreed to provide answers, but in exchange, his father had to agree to kill him. Oneiros is nothing if not a man of his word, and thus killed Orpheus, but in doing so, he committed filicide, a grave sin among the Ancient Greeks, and thus aroused the wrath of the Furies, setting in motion the events that would lead to his death.
Film — Live-Action
- Aquaman (2018): After Arthur defeats both David and Jesse Kane to rescue the hostages, Jesse pulls a Backstab Backfire as Arthur is walking away, causing himself to get trapped underneath a torpedo. When David begs Arthur to rescue his father from drowning, Arthur responds, "You killed innocent people! You ask the sea for mercy!"
- Law Abiding Citizen: Clyde's Rage Against the Legal System is an effort to get Nick to invoke this trope. After his family's killer is able to get away with raping and murdering his wife and daughter, Clyde kills the murderer and his accomplice before targeting everyone he blames for the Miscarriage of Justice, either by killing them or those they care about. Nick does eventually catch on to what Clyde is trying to do, and ultimately tricks him into blowing himself up with his own bomb.
- M: Serial killer Hans Beckert is kidnapped by the Berlin mob, who holds a mock trial over whether to kill him or hand him over to the police. Beckert gives an impassioned speech denouncing them as hypocrites who have no right to judge him, saying that he's driven to kill by uncontrollable compulsions, while they're all criminals by choice. He's unsuccessful in swaying them, however, and he's about to be lynched by the criminal crowd when the police burst in.
- In Woman Art Thou Loosed, the protagonist, Michelle, is a woman with a very troubled past. As a child, she was raped by her mother's boyfriend, and when she told the mother, she eventually sided with her boyfriend after she confronted him, he angrily denied it, and he threatened to leave her, even citing how no one else will want her since she's overweight. The trauma and grief from this causes her to develop a drug addiction and become a prostitute who eventually finds redemption through Reverend Jakes' ministry. She eventually meets up with her estranged mother and the boyfriend in his church, who are still together (and he still denies ever raping her), and she's still so afraid of him, she shoots him dead in the pulpit. In spite of her reasons, she is still sent to death row.
Literature
- In A Thousand Splendid Suns, Mariam kills her husband Rasheed to stop him from killing his other wife, Laila, after they had both endured years of horrendous abuse from him. Mariam turns herself in to the authorities so Laila and her children can go free. Mariam tells the judges everything that Rasheed did to them and says she's certain Rasheed would've killed them both if she'd let him live. Although one judge is sympathetic to Mariam, they all say they cannot show her leniency (which isn't surprising given this Afghanistan under the Taliban) and sentence Mariam to death. Mariam had already been prepared for this outcome, willing to give up her own life to save Laila. Part of her even believes it's "fair" because while Rasheed was an awful person, she did still commit murder and took away a little boy's father.
- In The Belgariad, Zedar was doomed by fate to kill Durnik as part of the complicated prophetic interplay between the forces of good and evil, and explicitly said that he didn't want to do it, and because of thisnote , he suffers a truly horrifying fate, even though Durnik is later resurrected.
- Dante's Inferno: Brutus is one of the most famous examples of this in literary history. Being a deeply sympathetic murderer who is nonetheless placed in the very lowest circle of hell for his betrayal. Downplayed in the larger hell ecosystem. All murderers are submersed in a river of boiling blood, but how deeply they are submerged varies based on their personal guilt.
- The Green Mile: Paul Edgecomb, the warden was forced to carry out Coffey's execution. He'd even given Coffey a chance to escape, though even he noted that it would have cost him his job at the least and that it wouldn't have been likely that Coffey, given his immense size and his gentle demeanor, would have gotten far anyway. Coffey refused to escape and allowed himself to be executed. But before he died, he gave a bit of his power to Edgecomb, in order to show him that it was the prisoner Wild Bill who had killed the two girls, which is why he'd had cruel guard Percy Whetmore inflicted with a demon that had infected the wife of Paul's boss, causing Whetmore to gun down Wild Bill. That bit of power had prolonged Paul Edgecomb's life by leaps and bounds, and he was not sure how much longer he had to live before he would be allowed to die, but a mouse, Mr. Jingles, who had also gotten a bit of Coffey's power, had survived decades with a much smaller dose of that power
Live-Action TV
- Cold Case:
- In episode "Blackout", the doer, the daughter of the Evil Matriarch who had previously molested her brother and was now attempting to do the same to her teenage son, drowns her to protect him. At the end, in spite of her remorse, her confession, and her sympathetic reasons, she is still arrested to her, her brother and son's anguish.
- In "The Promise" after a group of girls are invited to a frat house's "pig party" and one of the women, who was also raped by a local politician who attended the party, set the house on fire, which unintentionally killed one of the other women due to being locked in a room by one of the frat brothers. In spite of the rape and the likely temporary insanity she suffered at the time, she's still arrested for her culpability in her friend's death, to Detective Josie Sutton's dismay.
- The Ray Bradbury Theater: "Punishment Without Crime", a particularly egregious example, a man finds his wife having an affair behind his back. He goes to a company that can create an android facsimile of his wife, and arrange to "kill" her. However, in order to do the work, they need to have him put into a sleep state while the android is created. He wakes, and is confronted with the android of his adulterous spouse, and decides he doesn't want to kill her after all. But the android insists, saying that being killed by him is her sole duty and function, and that she cannot be at ease until he does. At last, he gives in and kills the android. Only to find that during the time he was "asleep", new laws were passed to bestow human rights on the android, and the government officials were waiting to arrest him, rather than halt the scenario as it played out. He is sentenced to death for his crime, despite the fact that he never killed another human being, and the government could have intervened and halted the scenario before the murder played out.
Music
- Bob Marley: "I Shot the Sheriff" focuses on Marley's character recounting how the titular Sheriff, John Brown, always hated him for some unknown reason and kept killing any seeds he planted before they grew, until finally he confronted Marley in the street, clearly planning to shoot him, so Marley had to resort to Killing in Self-Defense. He repeatedly maintains that he didn't shoot the Deputy, though, and ends the song declaring, "If I am guilty, I will pay!"
Video Games
- Master Detective Archives: Rain Code has the core mechanic of the Mystery Labyrinth. Protagonist Yuma uses the power of Death God Shinigami to find the truth of his cases. After the Prologue Chapter it is established that to escape the Mystery Labyrinth after entering, the true culprit has to die. Their soul being the binding of the Mystery Labyrinth. Chapter 2 is where this is a factor. The culprit being three close friends of someone murdered by the victim. They were all motivated by Revenge for their dead friend knowing that their victim couldn't be prosecuted in their isolated city because the victim had powerful connections.
- Planescape: Torment: Vhailor is the restless spirit of a particularly fanatical Mercykiller, Sigil's jailers and executioners, possessing his armor to continue his single-minded pursuit of justice after death. If he joins the Nameless One's party there are a couple of glaring examples of his merciless justice:
- After defeating a Fallen Angel a Good-aligned Nameless One has the opportunity to offer the angel a chance at redemption. But if Vhailor is in the party he refuses to let that happen and executes the angel on the spot.
- Over the course of the campaign the Nameless One discovers that one of his prior incarnations was a serial killer that Vhailor hunted before his past incarnation locked Vhailor up in the Mercykillers' prison. This may lead to the Nameless One fighting Vhailor in the final stage. In the "good" ending the Nameless One is condemned to the Lower Planes for the various crimes he barely remembers, and Vhailor swears to hunt him down if he tries to escape this punishment.
Visual Novels
- Ace Attorney:
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: In bonus case Rise From The Ashes Lana Skye was forced to cooperate with Gant to save her sister. Arrested like every other culprit worse than her.
- Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Justice For All, as the title says, has cases where Justice is given to All, even Sympathetic Murderer:
- Case 2 has Ini Miney, who through a very unfortunate series of events not only kills many people in the hospital but also loses her face and sister and is forced to change her identity. In order to not let this identity be revealed, she had to murder. Arrested like every other culprit worse than her.
- Case 3 has Acro, who lost his legs and his brother got into coma. This, combined with Regina's honest belief that his brother became a star, angered him and caused him to commit the murder. Arrested like any other culprit worse than him.
- Danganronpa has this trope by default, since characters are forced to participate in Class Trials to vote for the killer in order to save themselves, and Monokuma does not particularly care what their motive is; he will execute them just the same.
- Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc: Case 2 has Mondo regretting killing Chihiro due to his envy, but was executed due to the rules.
- Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair:
- Case 4 has Gundam, who killed Nekomaru to save classmates from hunger. Executed.
- Case 5 has Chiaki unknowingly killing Nagito due to his plan to expose the “traitor”. Any actual court would rule her Not Guilty, but since Monokuma wants to get rid of her so she can no longer interfere with his plans, she is executed with Monomi.
- Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony:
- Case 1 has Kaede killing Rantaro to expose the mastermind. Executed. For a bonus kick in the teeth, Case 6 reveals it wasn't even actually Kaede that did him in, but rather Tsumugi, the actual mastermind.
- Case 2 has Kirumi killing Ryoma to escape and save her country. Executed.
- Case 4 has Gonta killing Miu to keep (what he thinks is) the secret of the outside world from the classmates. Executed.
- Case 5 has Kaito and Kokichi collaborating to end the killing game. Kaito is executed, though he dies of his terminal illness just before the execution finishes.
