Neonaticide

The killing of a newborn infant within the first twenty-four hours of life, a specific criminological and forensic-psychiatric subcategory of infanticide distinguished by a documented, recurring offender profile and set of circumstances. Research literature on filicide, associated in particular with the psychiatrist Phillip Resnick's influential classification work, has found neonaticide most often committed by a young, unmarried mother who concealed her pregnancy from family and community and gives birth alone and in secret, frequently in a state of panic and without any prior documented history of mental illness, a pattern that contrasts with infanticide committed later in an infant's first year, more frequently associated with postpartum depression or postpartum psychosis. Reflecting this documented pattern, a number of jurisdictions, whether under a neonaticide, concealment-of-birth, or infanticide statute, apply different legal standards or reduced-culpability considerations to the killing of a newborn by its mother than to an ordinary homicide.