Homicide is one of the most challenging types of death to recover from as the bereaved does not begin to process the death and start their grief work at the time of death. Instead, they must endure events that hinder them from even beginning recovery, such as:
- Trial Dates. In homicide, justice is often not swift and involves trial dates that can be months or even years away. During this time, the bereaved is in the balance of accepting the death and seeking justice.
- Not guilty Verdict. The possibility of a not guilty verdict and even a not guilty verdict sets the bereaved back in grief recovery, as they are forced to wait for a retrial or give up on ever finding justice.
- Murderer out on bail. When a suspected murderer is granted bail, the bereaved live in fear of being stopped or intimidated into forgoing justice.
- At large murderer. In homicide it may take days, weeks, months, years or even never for the murderer to be found. The bereaved often speak of “closure, ” which often refers to finding out what, who, when and why the homicide occurred.
- Light/un-fair sentencing. It is difficult or even impossible to obtain a sentence matching what was done to their loved ones. In seeking justice, the bereaved may feel let down when the sentence is not what they expected.
- Parole Eligibility. Each time the murderer is eligible for parole is a re-hashing of the loss and a threat to the recovery and security of the bereaved.
- Unethical media. The publicity of a homicide can be positive or negative. The turning of homicide into the gutter press or fodder for gossip that ranges from character assassination of victim or over publicizing of the murderer can leave the bereaved feeling that the murderer has won. Such media has a negative impact on friends and families of the bereaved.
