
DATE: Tuesday, September 2, 1997            TAG: 9708310174
SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B3   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Public Safety 

SOURCE: BY JON FRANK, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  100 lines

MURDER INTHE FAMILYDESPITE THE PUBLICITY MANY OF THESE MURDRS GARNER - SUCH AS THE CARTER CASE INVIRGINIA BEACH - THEY HAVE DROPPED AS A PERCENTAGE OF ALL MURDERS AS HOMICIDES BY STRANGERS HAVE INCREASED. FAMILY VIOLENCE COUNSELORS PARTIALLY CREDIT TOUGHER DOMESTIC VIOLENCE LAWS FOR THE DECLINE.

When Zackary Anthony Carter fatally shot his half-sister last year in Virginia Beach, he became the first person in Virginia's most populous city to be prosecuted for murder under a new statute that automatically transfers violent juveniles to adult court.

Carter, 14 at the time of the crime, could go to prison for 43 years for killing his 8-year-old half-sister, Cierra Rose Carter. He will be sentenced in October for second-degree murder.

Juvenile crime is one of the most rapidly increasing categories of crime in the country. But Zackary Carter's case also illustrates a shrinking facet of the homicide picture in the U.S. - murder within the family.

Conventional wisdom has always held that families are among the likeliest places for murder to occur. Not anymore.

Three decades ago, approximately one in three homicides in the United States was committed by family members against other family members. When combined with murders committed by acquaintances, the family/acquaintance category made up the majority of homicides nationwide.

Since then, a significant shift in murder relationships has taken place. In 1997, victims are more likely to be killed by a stranger than by a family member or acquaintance.

Most experts blame illegal drugs. They say the burgeoning black market in crack cocaine, heroin and other controlled substances has greatly increased the number of murders committed by people who do not know their victims.

``The nation's drug trade is widely considered to be a major contributing factor to the rise in murders whose circumstances are unknown,'' according to an FBI report from November 1995.

During the past three decades, murders within the family have decreased - if not in actual number, as a percentage of the whole. Nationally, the percentage went from 31 percent in 1965 to 16 percent in 1980. By 1994 it was down to 12 percent.

Yet, as Cierra Carter's murder and many other local slayings show, the family remains a place where murder does occur. It's almost as common a place as the urban streets of most large cities - unless a person uses those streets to buy or sell drugs.

From 1993 through 1995 in South Hampton Roads, for instance, the number of murders committed within the family came close to equaling those committed by strangers, according to statistics kept by the FBI.

Historically, family violence resulting in murder has been so important to the overall homicide picture that the FBI subdivided the family category into smaller categories.

The FBI still identifies victims and killers as husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, daughters, sons, and other sub-categories.

``Our categories have been around a long time,'' said Nancy Carnes, an editor who helps write the FBI's published version of the Uniform Crime Reports. ``And because so many of the murders involved family members, we began looking at the relationships.''

What the categories show is that, typically, victims within families tend to be female and not related by blood, Carnes said. As many as 30 percent are wives or live-in girlfriends, she said.

Only about 4 percent of the killers are female, Carnes said.

Besides the increase in drug-related murders, other factors account for the percentage decline in murders within the family.

Counselors working in family violence give some credit to stiffer laws that require police to become involved early in domestic disputes.

Cheryl Bonneville, who operates a batterers' intervention program through the Norfolk YWCA, said that in the 1970s laws were changed to allow police to arrest batterers if they determine that an assault has occurred.

That has evolved into a law that took effect this summer, Bonneville said, requiring police to make an arrest when answering a domestic call for the third time at an address, or at an address where a physical injury has taken place.

Bonneville's program consists of 18 weeks of intensive instruction to help men develop better relationship skills. Men are ordered to take the course by a court in Norfolk or Virginia Beach as part of a suspended jail sentence.

Police in other states, Bonneville said, are stricter still on domestic violence. In Phoenix, she said, there is a zero-tolerance approach, which allows police to arrest even first-time offenders who do not injure the victim.

Bonneville said the increase in women's shelters also has helped to decrease murders. Virginia has more than 40, she said, and most other states have a similar distribution.

``We now have a national network of shelters,'' Bonneville said. ``We will shelter any woman in danger.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photos

Zackary Carter...

Cheryl Bonneville...

Graphic by John Earle

Decline in murders within families

Murders in area, 1993-95

Victim, 1993,1994,1995, Total for 3 years

For complete copy, see microfilm KEYWORDS: MURDER RATE HAMPTON ROADS