crime of passion

English

Noun

crime of passion (plural crimes of passion)

1. (law, criminology) A crime, typically a violent crime such as assault or murder, committed against a loved one because of sudden jealous rage or heartbreak rather than as a premeditated act.
   • 2007, Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men (motion picture), spoken by Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones):

     There was this boy I sent to the gas chamber at Huntsville here a while back. My arrest and my testimony. He killed a fourteen-year-old girl. Papers said it was a crime of passion but he told me there wasn't any passion to it. Told me that he'd been planning to kill somebody for about as long as he could remember. Said that if they turned him out he'd do it again.

Usage notes

• Not a technical legal term.

Translations

crime against a loved one because of jealous rage or heartbreak

• Catalan: crim passional m
• Finnish: intohimorikos
• French: crime passionnel (fr) m
• Malay: jenayah berang
• Polish: zbrodnia w afekcie f
• Russian: преступле́ние на по́чве стра́сти n (prestuplénije na póčve strásti)
• Spanish: crimen pasional m