History Main / SympatheticMurderer

* On ''Series/TheCloser'', there is an episode in which a twelve-year-old boy is found dead in an abandoned house. It turns out that he stood guard while three gang members raped a young woman, and when they left for a while she killed the boy so that she could get away before the others came back and raped her again. Understandably, Brenda refuses to call her a murderer.

** In spinoff ''Series/MajorCrimes'', we have Alfredo Torres, who shot the swim coach who molested his son years ago.

* ''Series/{{Columbo}}'' featured a bunch.

* Half of the offenders on ''Series/CriminalMinds'' are sympathetic. (It might or might not help that the team solves crimes by trying to get into the head of the perp.)
** The episode "[[Recap/CriminalMindsS3E10TrueNight True Night]]" featured a SerialKiller focusing on members of a certain street gang. The killer turned out to be a comic book artist who had a psychotic break (and thus wasn't even aware of what he was doing) after said street gang forced him to watch them rape and murder his pregnant fiancée before brutally stabbing him and leaving him for dead. To top it off, he's played by Creator/FrankieMuniz. Even the team felt sorry for him.
** Poor, poor Tobias Hankel. Brutally abused from a young age by his violent, fundamentalist father, spent years taking Dilaudid as an attempt to escape from his awful life, and ended up with [[spoiler: Dissociative Identity Disorder, with one of his personalities being that of his deceased father]]. But what makes him ''really'' sympathetic is the fact that, during the time he was holding Reid hostage, whenever he [[spoiler: adopted the personality of his father]] and hurt Reid, he would afterwards do his best to clean him up and try to stop his pain.
** In one episode, there are seemingly random killings, and the team believes it to be a homeless person. It turns out to be a former soldier with severe PTSD, who still believes he is in combat and feels terribly guilty about killing a young man from the other side. In the end, he's gunned down for apparently trying to kill a young boy, but with his dying breath, asked if the boy was safe.
** One episode involved a SerialKiller with OCD who, as a boy, watched his father kill his mother, went on to commit similar crimes, and bonded with a blind boy. It didn't help that said SerialKiller was absolutely adorable. Because of the blind boy (whose mother he'd killed), he saw what he'd become and hated it. At least that's what the end of the episode implied. He'd left a note at the murder which read "Please stop me" even prior to this as well. Clearly, he wasn't doing this out of desire, but from a psychological compulsion.
** The killer from "[[Recap/CriminalMindsS5E2Haunted Haunted]]", a previously non-violent man who had a psychotic break as a result of newly-unlocked memories of childhood trauma that he simply couldn't cope with.
** Megan Kane, the high-class escort who killed some of her obscenely-rich clients who refused to pay one red cent in child support.
** The woman in New Orleans who was raped and then got no justice for it, before she became a killer.
** Sheila Harrison, the elder sister of a girl gang-raped and left for dead at a fraternity party, started targeting not only her sister's rapists but also their college football coach who bribed a medical examiner to get them off the hook.
** "[[Recap/CriminalMindsS8E10TheLesson The Lesson]]", a man traumatised by witnessing the murder of his father during a robbery as a child. He lives a perfectly normal life until he receives a severe head injury in a car accident (the "trigger") and this prompts him to begin kidnapping people to replay the incident as human marionettes in order to change the outcome.
** "[[Recap/CriminalMindsS3E19TabulaRasa Tabula Rusa]]", a suspected serial killer awakes from a coma with no memory of his past life. He escapes from custody but rather than wanting to kill again he returns to his dumping ground and uncovers a body, proving to himself he was guilty after all. He tries to commit suicide but Hodge talks him out of it and he surrenders to face his day in court. The team debate amongst themselves if this is now the same man who committed the murders in the first place?

* ''Series/{{CSIVerse}}'' loves this trope. A few notable ones:
** "You've Got Male": An ex-con visits a woman he met via email while in prison, her sister shows up and taunts her over this, the two of them get into a fight, and the sister accidentally kills her. The sister then tells the convict that she'll blame him; thinking that no one would believe him, he kills her out of desperation to avoid going back to jail.
-->'''Killer''': Who'd believe a guy like me?\\
'''Grissom''': A guy like me.
** An aversion from ''CSI'' appears in the episode "Killer". The episode shows the murderer, a bank robber who kills the former drug addict who ratted him out. He is portrayed somewhat sympathetically (it's noted that he never harmed anyone during a robbery and at the end of the episode [[spoiler:he even turns himself in so his wife doesn't lose custody of their daughter]]). However, at the very end, he ruefully asks Grissom "So where did I screw up?" Grissom then bluntly tells him, "You killed two people." [[FridgeBrilliance Notably]], he wouldn't have been caught if he hadn't committed the second murder.
** A teenage girl accidentally kills her younger brother in "Lost & Found" when he catches their uncle forcing himself on her (which results in a child) and threatens to tell their mom; as TheUnfavourite, she knows her mom would sooner believe she'd forced herself on her uncle than the other way around. Her mother later kills her husband who loudly tries to take the blame for killing her son. In the end, the woman even acknowledges that all this could have been avoided if she'd been a better mother so her daughter could feel like she could trust her.
** An elderly soldier who lives in a care home in "Snakes" kills a telemarketer who had been taking advantage of an elderly neighbour of his with Alzheimer's by calling her repeatedly and selling her stuff, knowing she had forgotten the last call.
** A 'recovering' addict in "Road To Recovery" is found dead in a rehab clinic. The killer is found to be a recovering addict who is taking his treatment seriously for the sake of being allowed to see his children again. The victim had a rich husband and little to lose if she failed the course and enjoyed goading others into giving in to their vices. She put a gift-wrapped bottle of bourbon into the guy's room and kept pushing him to drink it until he snapped and killed her by accident. To really push it even after all that, the guy still never drank a drop and broke down crying in the station when he realised he'd never see his sons again.
** Subverted in "Coming of Rage" where the killer describes her plan to make herself into one of these for her trial, despite planning the cold-blooded murder of the victim. Sarah doesn't buy it. Of course, in CSI, you know you can't be sympathetic if Sarah doesn't sympathize with you...
** In "[[Recap/CSIS1E7BloodDrops Blood Drops]]," an entire family is murdered except for the two daughters, one a teenager, the other much younger. Turns out the murder was arranged by the older girl - her father had been sexually abusing her for years, and the younger girl was actually her own daughter, the product of the abuse. When their father began turning his attention on the younger girl, it was the last straw, and she convinced a couple of her male classmates to kill not only him but also her mother and her brothers (for knowing about the abuse and not doing anything to protect her).
** A [[BigFun jolly fat guy]] who was sick and tired of constantly having his mailbox smashed by drunken teenagers driving by. In revenge, he filled his mailbox with cement, and unfortunately, one of the teenagers' arms broke, their car swerved, and they ran into a tree, killing them. The man is still arrested for murder because he concealed evidence by burying the fatal mailbox in his yard. [[note]]This is a case of ArtisticLicenseLaw as felony murder is a huge stretch for any prosecutor trying to convict him, and even if they tried that, defacing a mailbox is Federal Crime and they would have no jurisdiction. And the burden of proof for reckless endangerment means they would have to convince a jury that it would be common sense that the kids would all die because of the concrete. At best they could nail him for destruction of evidence/obstruction of justice, a much less significant crime, especially under the circumstances. Long story short, he was arrested for plot reasons. [[/note]]
** The epitome, though, is the one guy who is responsible, by complete and total accident, for the death of his grandmother, wife, and next-door neighbor, and winds up buried up to his waist in cement for it.
** In the "[[Recap/CSINYS02E15 Fare Game]]" episode of ''Series/{{CSINY}}'', a chef is discovered to be the murderer of a millionaire who got her millions through multiple {{Frivolous Lawsuit}}s, of which he was one of the victims. After finally dragging himself out of bankruptcy, divorce, and a ruined life to try again working at a new restaurant and under a new name, she showed up at his new place with the intent of pulling the exact same scheme on his new boss, and he snapped, tracked her down, and killed her by letting her choke on one of the octopi served at the restaurant in an echo of the stunt she'd originally pulled as an excuse to sue him. The guy from the B-plot of the above was also sympathetic. He was the participant in a water gun game where players were encouraged to creatively trick targets into letting down their guard to be 'assassinated'. The victim tricked his soon-to-be killer, a desperate actor trying to provide for his family into thinking he got a part only to 'kill' him. The killer decided to get back at him by taking a blank gun and firing it into him from point-blank range, sadly that was so close that even the blanks would be lethal and it killed him.
** From the same series, there's the perp from "[[Recap/CSINYS05E20 Prey]]": the victim was a stalker who had already caused one of his victims to commit suicide. The perp was another victim whom the law did very little to protect (a few restraining orders, the violations of which only got the stalker a few days in jail) and had even changed her name and moved to another city to escape, only for him to follow her. Feeling that she had no option other than killing herself or be killed, she finally killed him. The team feels pretty sympathetic towards her (even Mac, who. in an earlier episode. has shown disgust to a rape victim who killed rapists acquitted on technicalities) and Hawkes even reassures her that since she only left circumstantial evidence (the woman audited a class that Stella taught), it will be very hard for her to be convicted.
** The cheerleader who poisoned a man with atropine during a basketball game. Why? Because, during another game sometime before, he had mocked her for being overweight, which led her to a completely undeserved HumiliationConga (including a sudden break-up). The girl managed to lose weight and carry out a GambitRoulette to get her revenge.
** And another in a different episode, who, because of false advertising and criminal negligence on the part of joke store owner Laughing Larry, had a childhood friend die in front of him when they were ten years old. He promptly stopped reading any comic books or playing with any toys, and when he got married, later, refused to let his son do either of those or play outside. When his wife divorced and placed him with a restraining order, he understood he was in the wrong, and blamed Laughing Larry for making him that way, deciding to kill him with a lethal ExplosiveCigar. Unfortunately, Laughing Larry gave the cigar to an innocent man. The killer felt deeply guilty and even tried to stop the man before it blew up and killed him, and was willing to pay for his crime, so long as he knew that Laughing Larry would never laugh again.
** And another at the end of a fourth season episode had a police commissioner shoot an unarmed inmate inside the interrogation room because [[spoiler: the inmate was a 30+-year-old convicted sexual predator who, along with another predator, forged fake birth certificates to take advantage of the first one's [[OlderThanTheyLook teenage-looking appearance]] to enroll in high school and lure teenage girls to their shared home, get them drunk, and rape them together. The only known victim (as in, many others exist but they haven't been shown) was the police commissioner's young daughter, who was humiliated and traumatized by the ordeal and only came forward when she was seen on footage after talking to a guidance counselor about the ordeal just before he's murdered]]. From everyone's reaction, combined with the commissioner's face afterwards, they know he's going to jail for it, but it damn sure is worth it.
** Another one in ''Series/CSIMiami'', a mother was killed at her home. At first, as usual, the first suspect is her husband, and later, her daughter's boyfriend, who got some glass fragments on his shoes traced to a broken lamp in the house. However, [[spoiler: they found a video which was recorded over an old recording, and the old recording showed that, indeed, the 'monster' in the house was actually the mother, not the father. She was killed by her young son, and her eldest daughter, who just seen him do it, followed suit and beat her up with a bat a few more times in the head.]]

** Lumen from season 5 is an even better example. This is because she kills her[[RapeAsDrama rapists]] / [[SerialKiller kil]][[TortureCellar lers]] ([[BloodSplatteredWeddingDress who picked a bad time]]) as opposed to Dexter who kills because of his DarkAndTroubledPast.

* In the ''Series/{{House}}'' episode "[[Recap/HouseS6E03TheTyrant The Tyrant]]", the team's Patient of the Week is the president of an African country who is planning to commit genocide as soon as he's released from the hospital. [[spoiler: After instinctively calling out a warning that saved the president's life from an assassination attempt, Dr. Chase decides that he can't morally save the man's life again and takes matters into his own hands by faking a blood test so the president would be misdiagnosed and given treatment that, given his actual condition, would kill him. By this point in the show we're so attached to Chase anyway that it's doubly hard to hold it against him.]]

* A similar example to that last CSI one happened in ''Series/InspectorRex'' where a murdered businessman was revealed to be a pedophile and was killed by his teenage daughter who he had been abusing for years and had started to move on to her younger brother instead, which caused her to snap. The episode is even called "[[AssholeVictim Finally The Monster Is Dead]]". [[HarsherInHindsight Now, consider the fact that the show was made in Austria where, years later, a case involving a certain Josef Fritzl surfaced...]]

* ''[[Series/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnit Law & Order: SVU]]'' had more than its fair share:

See also ManslaughterProvocation, and IneffectualSympatheticVillain for those who put the "pathetic" in "sympathetic". If the character was introduced and fleshed out ''before'' he was revealed to be a murderer, it's SympatheticMurderBackstory. Often involves KillingInSelfDefense. See also AssholeVictim for cases where the murder is sympathetic primarily because the victim was so ''un''sympathetic. Compare JustifiedCriminal for sympathetic crimes besides murder. This can also be compared to the SerialKillerKiller, who is sympathetic mainly because he only targets people even worse than he is.

** The title character is one, a serial killer whose homicidal tendency was channeled by an adoptive father so he only kills [[AssholeVictim very bad people]], including [[SerialKillerKiller fellow serial killers.]]

** In "[[Recap/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnitS11E15Confidential Confidential]]," an investment banker who had gotten away with murder two decades earlier and is on the verge of doing it again after the detectives have spent the episode in vain trying to land enough evidence to nail him is gunned down in the precinct by a man he defrauded years ago. The final scene of the episode reveals that [[spoiler:the man's lawyer was the one who told the murderer where to find him. She knew that [[AssholeVictim he'd raped and murdered two women]] and ruined an innocent man's life to cover his tracks, and she knew he'd never stop and there was nothing she could do within the legal system because of privilege rules (anything she revealed would have been thrown out as evidence), so she found another way to make sure he'd never be able to hurt anyone else. The detectives figure it out, but she's set up the situation very carefully to give herself plausible deniability, and while the detectives have fought to work around such things on past cases, they are clearly not inclined to make the effort here.]]

* ''Series/ThePower2023'': Allie finishes off her foster father after she's already incapacitated him through an initial shock form her power, at the voice's urging. Since he had just tried to rape her and it's implied he's a {{serial rapist}}, she stays pretty sympathetic.

** In "[[Recap/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnitS6E6Conscience Conscience]]", a young boy is revealed to have murdered another one in cold blood. Initially believing him to be remorseful and acting on abuse he suffered from camp, the team tries to get him to be sentenced to juvenile detention only to learn from the campers that the boy was a sociopath and that they couldn't try him as an adult unless they wanted him to walk free right then and there. The father of the murdered boy, amidst his grief, actually forgave and pitied the boy who killed his son because he also initially believed his lies. As he's leaving the courthouse, the boy mockingly apologizes to the father, which causes him to realize that the boy feels no remorse -- he grabs a bailiff's gun and shoots the boy in the chest, killing him. They're able to convince a jury to acquit the father as he most likely acted on grief and rationalize to themselves that while the boy certainly would have killed again, the father won't.

** In "[[Recap/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnitS6E6Conscience Conscience]]", a young boy is revealed to have murdered another one in cold blood. Initially believing him to be remorseful and acting on abuse he suffered from camp, the team tries to get him to be sentenced to juvenile detention only to learn from the campers that the boy was a sociopath and that they couldn't try him as an adult unless they wanted him to walk free right then and there. The father of the murdered boy, amidst his grief, actually forgave and pitied the boy who killed his son because he also initially believed his lies. As he's leaving the courthouse, the boy mockingly apologizes to the father, which causes him to realize that the boy feels no remorse -- he grabs a bailiff's gun and shoots the boy in the chest, killing him. They're able to convince a jury to acquit the father as he most likely acted on grief and rationalize to themselves that while the father might not kill again, the boy certainly would have.

*** The killer of Chapter 4, [[spoiler:the GentleGiant Gonta Gokuhara]], committed murder because [[spoiler:he discovered a truth about the outside world ([[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt it was completely destroyed]]) that was [[GoMadFromTheRevelation so horrifying]] that he decided (with some persuading from [[ManipulativeBastard Kokichi]] [[TheHeavy Oma]]) to MercyKill the rest of the group by winning the game, in the process foiling Miu Iruma’s plan to kill Oma by killing her]]. Making it even worse, [[spoiler:the murder happened within a virtual world, and Gonta happened to have mixed up the two wires he had to plug into his headset before logging in, so when everyone logged out, he ended up having no memory of anything that happened within the virtual world, [[FalseFriend Kokichi]] had no actual desire to collaborate in the MercyKill plan and just used him for his own ends, revealing him as the culprit through the trial and gleefully watching him get executed]], and even worse is that [[spoiler:the end of the world scene that drove him to murder was likely faked by Monokuma]].
*** [[spoiler:Kaito Momota]] becomes a murderer in Chapter 5, but not because of malice or the desire to escape: [[spoiler:he kills Kokichi Oma (with his consent) to save Maki Harukawa - who had shot Oma with poisoned crossbow bolts - from being executed by Monokuma]].

*** The killer of Chapter 4, [[spoiler:the GentleGiant Gonta Gokuhara]], committed murder because [[spoiler:he discovered a truth about the outside world ([[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt it was completely destroyed]]) that was [[GoMadFromTheRevelation so horrifying]] that he decided (with some persuading from [[ManipulativeBastard Kokichi]] [[TheHeavy Oma]]) to MercyKill the rest of the group by winning the game, in the process foiling Miu Iruma’s plan to kill Oma by killing her]]. Making it even worse, [[spoiler:the murder happened within a virtual world, and Gonta happened to have mixed up the two wires he had to plug into his headset before logging in, so when everyone logged out, he ended up having no memory of anything that happened within the virtual world]], and even worse is that [[spoiler:the end of the world scene that drove him to murder was likely faked by Monokuma]].

* [[{{Music/deco27}} DECO*27’s]] music project [[{{Music/Milgram}} MILGRAM]] has a cast of 10 prisoners who have all killed someone in one way or another, and it’s up to the [[AudienceParticipation audience to decide]] wether they feel sympathy for them and if they are willing to forgive them for their murders.

** In the case of Charles Augustus Milverton, Holmes and Watson actually witness the murder of the title character, an utterly odious blackmailer, but opt not to report it. a) They were burgling the man's house at the time, making it difficult to explain how they saw the crime committed; and b) Holmes has a great deal of sympathy with anyone who was a victim of the blackmailer striking back at him, and c) the killer is implied to be [[spoiler: royalty]].

** ''VisualNovel/HigurashiWhenTheyCry'' has this in spades. Most of the main characters end up like this in [[GroundhogDayLoop some version of the world]]. Keiichi [[spoiler:killed Satoko's abusive uncle to protect her]], Rena [[spoiler:killed Satoko's uncle and his girlfriend to protect her father from their blackmail (and stop the girlfriend from throttling her)]]. [[spoiler:Shion]] is a subversion because, while starting off tragic, it's ruined by her [[spoiler: going AxCrazy on Keiichi, Mion, Rika, and Satoko even after realizing that she's wrong]]. It turns out much later that there were ways to avoid these and still solve the problems... but dang if it didn't feel good watching [[AssholeVictim some of those jerks]] get it.
*** And then there is [[spoiler:the BigBad Miyo Takano, who masterminds everything because of her DarkAndTroubledPast and manipulation by [[GreaterScopeVillain her superiors]]. However, she [[MoralEventHorizon goes way too far]] and starts being a {{sadist}}ic {{Troll}} to the main heroes, which [[UnintentionallyUnsympathetic diminishes]] this status]].

** ''VisualNovel/UminekoWhenTheyCry'' has [[spoiler:Beatrice/Sayo Yasuda, who sets up the Ushiromiya Massacre as payback for how [[AmbiguousGender they]] were treated by the family (thrown off a cliff as a baby, bullied by the maids, being a ChildByRape, [[LoveHurts painful love life]] and gender issues), and EP7 even reveals they were not even the actual culprit]].

* Lucy from ''Manga/ElfenLied''. Even being a mass murderer with a penchant for {{Slasher Smile}}s and ColdBloodedTorture isn't enough to keep her from being sympathetic; her backstory is ''just that crappy'' that you can't help but want to give her a hug even when she's in the middle of eviscerating some innocent or not-so-innocent soul.
** [[spoiler: She does seem to rarely but significantly show remorse for her killings at times though, notably before her StartOfDarkness for one thing, and her horror at killing Kouta's family sticks with her even when she's off the deep end.]]

* Scar from ''Manga/FullmetalAlchemist''. Even his ruthlessness and attempt to kill TheProtagonist isn't enough to keep him from sympathetic, given that he is a genocide survivor who lost everything he held dear and is attempting to strike back at the country (and specifically at [[PersonOfMassDestruction the military's alchemists]]), that carried out the genocide of his people. He also admits that he feels horribly guilty for [[spoiler:killing Winry's parents because they were innocents and had saved him]].
* ''Gokuaku no Hana'' ("Flower of Carnage") does this with none other than Jagi of ''Manga/FistOfTheNorthStar'' infamy... sort of. Mildly subverted by itself, as that sympathy will be for who he ''was''.
* [[spoiler:Alma Karma]] from ''Manga/DGrayMan'', who may have had a worse childhood than even Allen!

%%* D's animals in ''Manga/PetShopOfHorrors''.
* A few in the ''Franchise/AceAttorney'' manga
** [[spoiler:Brock Johnson]] from Turnabout Gallows killed Robin Wolfe, who had essentially driven Eddie Johnson, the killer's [[spoiler:younger brother]] to suicide. Subverted in that no one, especially Robin's daughter, sympathizes with him and she even asks if she's now justified in murdering him.
** An interesting case occurs in Turnabout From Heaven, in which Diana Wheatley is accused of killing her abusive father, Buck. Post-HeelFaceTurn Edgeworth lampshades this trope, saying that he sympathizes with her, but she must pay for her crime. However, Phoenix works, as always, to poke holes in the case, leading the suspicion to [[spoiler:Diana's mother, Dreama,]] who would be a case, as it is initially thought that she [[spoiler:[[MamaBear killed Buck for harming Diana]].]] But in the end, [[spoiler:Buck's death was not the result of murder at all, as his cat came into contact with buckwheat, and accidentally caused him to ingest some, causing him to die of an allergic reaction]].
** The final case of the Miles Edgeworth side involves such a huge AssholeVictim that was tarnishing a local clinic's reputation and extorting money from it (in the form of free treatments) that nobody is surprised when he's killed. The killer ends up [[spoiler:being a young man whose life had been saved at that clinic and couldn't stand seeing how much the victim's extortion was hurting the doctor both emotionally and financially.]]
* The murderer [[spoiler: (or, rather, murderers)]] in the Academy arc of ''Manga/BlackButler'', especially compared to earlier antagonists, can come off as this. [[spoiler: Greenhill didn't plan to kill [[AssholeVictim Derrick Arden]], but the sight of him [[KickTheDog beating up younger students]] and having it covered up by the vice principal incensed him enough for a [[YouWouldntLikeMeWhenImAngry loss of control]] with a cricket bat. His fellow Prefects helped take out the VP and cover up the incident, [[WellIntentionedExtremist to preserve]] [[AppealToTradition the school's reputation.]]]] Still murder, but almost jarringly non-evil for a series with a VillainProtagonist, as is promptly {{lampshade|Hanging}}d by a burst of laughter from [[spoiler: Undertaker]] at Ciel's faked horror.
* A completely unexpected and unusual example comes from ''Manga/AttackOnTitan''. [[spoiler: The Colossal Titan, Armored Titan, and the Female Titan all turn out to be sympathetic once their {{Secret Identiti|y}}ies are revealed. Although they are mass murderers responsible for much of the death in the series, they're also guilt-ridden {{Tyke Bomb}}s that have been deeply traumatized by what they've been forced to do. Reiner claims that they were just "stupid kids" that didn't understand anything, while Bertolt makes it clear that they don't have any choice and it ''has'' to be done. Annie is similarly aware that abandoning their mission isn't an option, no matter how much she hates having to kill people and just wants to see her father again.]]

* Hiro from ''Anime/LilyCat'' is wanted for the murders of three men. It turns out that he killed them because they got his sister hooked on drugs and she became a prostitute who eventually died from an overdose.
* This is a staple in ''Manga/TheKindaichiCaseFiles''. The main murder case is almost never motivated purely by greed or to cover up past crimes. They are almost always someone who has lost a loved one to their targets, or have otherwise suffered abuse from the AssholeVictim, and is driven by their rage to become murderers. Even the ones who are financially motivated, such as the "Legend of Amakusa Treasure" case, is portrayed sympathetically. [[spoiler:The culprit has a dying daughter who desperately needs an expensive surgery, which he can't afford. The man's deceased wife is a supposed heiress to a conglomerate, but she has four other siblings who have a greater claim to the inheritance, so he kills them all to ensure that his daughter is the sole heir to the riches.]]

* ''ComicBook/JohnnyTheHomicidalManiac'' had a bad habit of torturing people who annoyed him, but as the comic went on his targets started to get less and less sympathetic (such as a pedophile who was going to molest Squee and his psychotic fanboy Jimmy who raped someone [[note]]both of these cases may have been more of Johnny's hatred of physical contact than a case of EvenEvilHasStandards, it's hard to say[[/note]]). Even the ones that weren't overtly murderers themselves still tended to be extremely unpleasant people.

* ''ComicBook/TheIncredibleHulk'': One issue features Doc Samson dealing with the vigilante Crazy Eight/Leslie Anne Shappe, who has been sentenced to the electric chair after murdering a senator. Not until after she has been executed, does Samson discover the motive for the murder. She killed the man because he had been beating his wife, who was an old friend of Crazy Eight from high school. The wife actually killed (or helped kill) her husband, the vigilante actually took the blame and died in her place, knowing it was unlikely that the wife would get a fair trial given her husband's position of power and the powerful friends he had that helped cover up the abuse. Crazy Eight sacrificed her life for her friend.
* ''ComicBook/ThePunisher''
** Frank is regularly "accidentally" allowed to get away by cops who think that he is doing the right thing (and lightening their workload). Helps that he pretty much only kills AssholeVictims by definition.
** The MAX version had a defining incident in his youth when a friend of his committed suicide after becoming the victim of the local don's son (a SerialRapist). The girl's brother was in the Marines, had someone cover for him when he went out for the night, and burned the rapist alive.
* ''ComicBook/WonderWomanTheHiketeia'' revolves around Franchise/WonderWoman having to protect a young woman named Danny who murdered four men. The men were responsible for raping and abusing Melody which drove her to drug addiction and suicide. The apathy from the cops made Danny believe that the only way to get justice for her sister was to kill the men who drove her to her death.

* In the ''[[VisualNovel/Danganronpa2GoodbyeDespair DR2]]'' fanfic ''FanFic/SystemRestore'', the second murderer clearly thinks that they're this and that their victim [[AssholeVictim fully deserved to die]]. After all, they were trying to [[spoiler:push Kuzuryuu [[LadyMacbeth to murder]] a friend of hers]]... Determining that this was a case of {{Revenge Before Reason}}ing, they judged that [[MurderIsTheBestSolution murder was the best option]]. Further complicating this is that the previous culprit was ''also'' sympathetic, and the second clearly expects the others to react much the same.
* Alex Harris, the protagonist of the ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' / ''ComicBook/PowerGirl'' crossover fic ''FanFic/OriginStory'' becomes one after her RoaringRampageOfRevenge against the ''ComicBook/{{Thunderbolts}}'', during which she kills Venom, the Radioactive Man, and Bullseye. Several members of the law enforcement community state outright that they're not sure about prosecuting her because if anyone [[AssholeVictim deserved a good killing]] it was Bullseye.

* In ''Fanfic/GoldPoisons'', the murderer is thankfully unsuccessful. Either way, [[spoiler: Mo Xiulan]] is an easily-pitied character who only participated in the scheme at the orders of [[spoiler: Jin Guangshan]].

* ''Film/{{Sleepers}}'': Given what Tommy and John went through, who could blame them for giving Nokes (the man who sexually abused them as children) his well-deserved karma? After encountering him by chance, they [[GroinAttack shoot him first in the groin]] and then, everywhere else. During the ensuing trial, their friends, who were abused as well, help them get away with murder.
* ''Film/TheUnitedStatesOfLeland'' outraged many disability rights activists with its sympathetic portrayal of the murderer of an autistic child.
* In ''Film/{{M}}'', it's a sympathetic ''child'' murderer, but who's also a ReluctantPsycho.
* Creepily played straight in ''Film/{{Basic Instinct}}''. Catherine Trammell indirectly seems to be tired of male chauvinism. It's more explicitly implied in the reason Roxy killed her brothers and father.
* ''Red Dragon'' plays up [[Literature/RedDragon the book's]] depiction of Francis Dolarhyde as someone who is not so much a man who does not enjoy his serial killing as a Dissociative Identity Disorder (multiple personalities)-riddled individual whose alternate personality bullies him into committing his atrocities. For the most part-Dolarhyde is only sympathetic if the titular dragon was really an alternate personality and not just a personification of his homicidal urges. The ending really suggests that the whole [[VillainousBreakdown deceleration]] of his violent impulses, culminating in [[spoiler: his HeroicSacrifice to spare Reba]], was really Dolarhyde [[spoiler: [[LargeHam hamming it up]] as part of his BatmanGambit to kill Will's family]]. It can't all be an act though. At first, he genuinely does want to prevent the Dragon (or the homicidal aspect of his own psyche, whichever) from harming Reba, and in the novel comes really close to suicide because of it. The fact that he eats the painting proves that. But MotiveDecay kicks in when, in a spectacular KickTheDog moment, [[spoiler: he sees Reba kissing Mandy]]. At that point [[JumpingOffTheSlipperySlope he takes a flying leap off the sanity wagon]], and decides that [[PutThemAllOutOfMyMisery a massive Graham-related killing spree]] is in order. The Dolarhyde of the film ''Film/{{Manhunter}}'', on the other hand, really is sympathetic. It really helps that [[spoiler: the part where he does his BatmanGambit is cut]].
* The titular serial killer of ''Film/MrBrooks'' is a massive example, this trope being the focus of the entire film.
* In ''Film/{{Monster}}'', Aileen Wournos murders seven men, but it's understandable because she suffered so many cruelties in life (e.g., rape, poverty, prostitution, discrimination).

* The mentally unstable George Loomis (Creator/JosephCotten) from the 1953 film ''Film/{{Niagara}}''. His wife (Creator/MarilynMonroe) and her lover are plotting his murder (after, it is implied, deliberately driving him mad), but the plot backfires and Loomis kills the lover in self-defense. Later, he vengefully murders his wife and is overcome with remorse. At the end of the film, while trapped with an innocent girl in a boat hurtling toward the edge of UsefulNotes/NiagaraFalls, he helps her climb safely out onto a rock before falling to his death over the edge, possibly making this an example of RedemptionEqualsDeath.
* The titular character from ''Film/{{Psycho}}'' is a very deeply disturbed man, and the movie is directed in such a way as to elicit sympathy from the audience after he kills Marion. In the end, he becomes a figure of pity and is stated to not really be responsible for his own actions. The later sequels reveal he was sent to a mental institution.
%%* Before ''Film/{{Psycho}}'', there was Mark Lewis from ''Film/{{PeepingTom}}''. Mark was abused by his father and used as a guinea pig for his fear-testing experiments, where he would traumatize and film his own son to see his reactions to various frightening things; in the present, Mark is a mentally-ill serial killer who murders women and films their final moments in order to preserve their frightened expressions, and oftentimes tells those that he's close to to not be afraid of him since he would become compelled to film and murder them. [[spoiler: His love interest ends up finding Mark's films and is horrified, which causes Mark to explain everything to her before filming himself committing suicide.]]

* Carl Lee Hailey in ''Film/ATimeToKill'' (and the book it's based on, naturally), so very much. He hid inside the local courthouse so he could commit premeditated murder against two men-redneck racists who kidnapped, raped, and attempted to murder Carl's daughter and were likely to escape punishment for their crime unless Carl resorted to vigilantism.

* In the 1993 film ''Film/DesperateJustice'', also known as ''A Mother's Revenge'', a 12-year-old girl named Wendy is raped and beaten by a janitor at her school whom she trusted. Which is not a spoiler since it happens early in the film and kicks off the entire plot. The spoiler, and where this trope comes into play, is that [[spoiler: the janitor's case was dismissed by the judge, in large part because his mother lied about having dinner with him at the time of the murder. This (combined with the janitor smiling and laughing about the ruling) pisses Wendy's mother off so much that ''she shoots and murders the janitor'' at the trial, and she is then the sympathetic murderer for the rest of the film. The main "plot" of the film then centers around whether the mother is really sympathetic or whether she's no better than the janitor]].

* Matthew Poncelet in ''Film/DeadManWalking''. He may be a convicted murderer himself, but he's hardly an unsympathetic one. Even Sister Helen Prejean [[SympathyForTheDevil sympathizes with him]] when she helps to be a spiritual adviser for him.
* In ''{{Film/Chicago}}'' ([[{{Theatre/Chicago}} and the stage musical it was based on]]), the song "Cell Block Tango" is about the various death row inmates attempting to {{invoke|dTrope}} this with regard to themselves, with varying degrees of sanity and success. [[spoiler: One was actually innocent, the rest largely making excuses.]]
* ''Film/AllThisAndHeavenToo'' goes this route with its portrayal of the Duke of Praslin, amplifying whatever extenuating circumstances he may have had in RealLife and portraying Frances [[AssholeVictim as a complete bitch]].
* ''Film/CruelAndUnusual'': Maylon, who poisoned Edgar so she could escape the complete control he had over her life.
* The titular ''John Doe: Vigilante'' is a brutal, vicious, SerialKiller. But his victims are all [[AssholeVictim rapists, child molesters/abusers, and abusive husbands/boyfriends]]. He caps off his spree by killing the very person who triggered it--the man who murdered his wife and daughter.
* The Dutch movie ''TBS'' features a [[TheWoobie Woobieish]] convicted murderer who has been confined to a mandatory mental health clinic for criminals for allegedly murdering his father and sister. He escapes to track down his mother and prove his innocence, and along the way kidnaps a teenage girl who develops Stockholm Syndrome. Over the course of the film, it becomes clear that he's a genuinely delusional psychotic, [[spoiler:ending up killing both his mother and the girl. He doesn't gain any pleasure from this whatsoever and voluntarily returns to prison at the end]].
* ''{{Film/Sweetwater}}'': Sarah's killing spree is understandable after what she's been through, even if not all of her victims were that bad.
* ''Film/ISpitOnYourGrave'': Jennifer and Katie in the first two films (original or remake). You can't blame them for wanting to get revenge that much. However, in the third film, Jennifer gets a lot less sympathetic as she starts going after people who she doesn't know have really raped or murdered anyone.
* Some of ''Franchise/JamesBond''s killings would fit the legal definition of murder. Considering his victims are invariably [[AssholeVictim terrorists, gangsters, evil masterminds, and other such scum]], it's unlikely any jury would convict (and Bond's license to kill literally means that so long as he can justify any killing he does as necessary for completing his current mission, the British courts won't even try to prosecute him. The courts of whatever country he's working in should he be caught is another matter).
* Anna of ''Film/TheArtOfSelfDefense'' is constantly belittled by Sensei and the dojo for simply being a woman. As a part of her backstory, the only reason she was given her own changing room as the dojo's only female student is that she was attacked from behind after the men were done changing and showed no mercy against her assailant.
* ''{{Film/Martyrs}}'': Lucie murders her torturers and their children. However, given what they did to her, and the obvious mental illness it caused her, she doesn't really lose sympathy.
* ''Film/LadyMacbeth'': [[spoiler:Katherine]], at least in regards to her [[spoiler:father-in-law and husband]]. The sympathy soon fades when she [[spoiler:kills Teddy however.]]
* ''Film/DeathWish2018'': There is debate about this among people in Chicago, but most of them view Kersey this way. Even one of the detectives on the case seems to, although he can't prove Kersey did it anyway. Given what his family endured and that all his victims are [[AssholeVictim violent criminals]], most of the audience may too.
* ''Film/NoEscape1994'': Robbins shot his CO dead for ordering him to kill civilians.
* ''Film/SixtyEightKill'': The rest of the people he kills are to defend himself or others, but Chip also kills [[spoiler:Monica]] at the end because she murdered [[spoiler:Violet]]. As she ''really'' deserved it, however, no one is likely going to care.
* ''Film/TheyThem2022'': Molly is the killer, it turns out, as a former resident of the camp whose friend was killed by their "aversion therapy" electroshock treatment. Owen didn't even remember her. She targets him and all the others, who have been abusing or even killing LGBT+ youth for many years trying to "cure" them.
* ''Film/TheRetreat2021'': Renee kills Layna and later Gavin when both are helpless. However, as they're depraved murderers who had tried to murder her and Val it's likely no one will care.
* ''Film/TheCell'': Carl gets some sympathy from Catherine after she learns about his abusive past, although the film doesn't take the easy way out by claiming that his FreudianExcuse makes up for anything. Both the child Carl and the Demon King that Catherine faces off against are integral parts of his personality and there is no "redeeming" Carl by simply destroying the latter. The rational, adult Carl persona knows he is BeyondRedemption and [[DeathSeeker wants to die]].

* Literature/SherlockHolmes had to deal with a few of these.
** ''A Study In Scarlet''. The victims had been responsible for an ArrangedMarriage that involved kidnapping the bride, killing her father in the process, and leading to her DeathByDespair. Her true love had finally tracked them down and killed them.
** In the short story "The Adventure of the Abbey Grange", the AssholeVictim was a drunken, [[DomesticAbuse abusive husband]]; the Sympathetic Murderer was actually guilty either of manslaughter or self-defense since the husband attacked him when he caught him talking with his wife, but the circumstances made it look ''very'' bad.
** In the short story "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot", the first set of crimes is avenged by one of these.
** In the short story "The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge", the actual victim was a would-be Sympathetic Murderer who was killed by his target (an ex-dictator who had killed the victim's father, among others). It is strongly implied that more successful Sympathetic Murderers caught up with the target in the end.
** In the case of Charles Augustus Milverton, Holmes and Watson actually witness the murder of the title character, an utterly odious blackmailer, but opt not to report it. a) They were burgling the man's house at the time, making it difficult to explain how they saw the crime committed; and b) Holmes has a great deal of sympathy with anyone who was a victim of the blackmailer striking back at him, and c) the killer is implied to be [[spoiler: royalty]].
** In "The Adventure of the Cardboard Box," the killer is a sailor who murdered his wife and her lover in a fit of passion, then cut off their ears and mailed them to his wife's sister, who had encouraged the affair. He's sympathetic not because of what he did, but because he clearly regrets it and was in fact deeply in love with his wife; he even says that he would have spared her life if she hadn't started wailing over her dead lover's body.
** In "The Boscombe Valley Mystery", the killer murdered a blackmailer - mostly to protect his daughter. According to his words, if the innocent suspect had been sentenced by the court, he would have confessed to the murder. And he was terminally ill.
* Creator/KerryGreenwood's Literature/PhryneFisher has also had to deal with these.
** The short story "Overheard on a Balcony", in which more than one person tried to kill the victim on the same evening, mainly because he was an absolute bastard and a blackmailer.
** The finale of ''Murder in Montparnasse'' can be considered to invoke this trope - the victim had committed at least three murders, and at least two of the investigations had been botched, so various parties took matters into their own hands.
** ''Murder in the Dark'': the various attempts on the life of Gerald Templar are eventually traced to [[spoiler: his long-suffering, unappreciated butler/business manager]].
** [[spoiler: ''Dead Man's Chest'': The death of Mrs. [=McNaster=] is revealed to be murder, done by Bridget, one of the housemaids who'd had enough of how Mrs. [=McNaster=] abused her companion.]]
** ''Death By Water'': the jewels stolen were removed from the thieves and sent to those who had been wronged by those who they'd belonged to (although at least one of the victims had no known... well, victim.)
* Disturbing as it may be, one cannot help but feel at least a little pity for the two killers described in Truman Capote's ''Literature/InColdBlood''. In fact, this may have been what Capote was going for, as he spent a lot of time with the killers when he was researching for the book (especially Perry Smith who, depending on your perspective, may have had a FreudianExcuse) and began to sympathize with them.
* The Monster in ''Literature/{{Frankenstein}}'', by way of [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge crimes of]] [[ParentalAbandonment justifiable]] passion.
* [[spoiler:Maxim de Winter]] in ''Literature/{{Rebecca}}'' -- though not in the movie, which was {{Bowdlerise}}d in this particular to comply with UsefulNotes/TheHaysCode.

* ''Literature/{{Thinner}}'', another Creator/StephenKing book, revolves around Billy Halleck, an obese lawyer who killed a Gypsy woman while driving, but manages to escape any punishment [[UsefulNotes/VictimBlaming while her name is smeared through court]]. This prompts her 106-year-old father [[GypsyCurse to curse him]], the judge, and the sheriff who were all complicit in [[ScrewTheRulesIHaveConnections his escaping punishment]] with various means of BodyHorror - Halleck with losing two pounds every day until he effectively vanishes, the Judge with growing scaly skin, and the sheriff with weeping sores covering his face. The sheriff actually urges Halleck to have some sympathy for the distraught father.
-->'''Hopley''': All his life he's heard a bad deal called a dirty gyp. The "good folks" got roots; you got none. This guy, Halleck, he's seen canvas tents burned for a joke back in the thirties and forties, and maybe there were babies and old people that burned up in some of those tents. He's seen his daughters or his friends' daughters attacked, maybe raped, because all those "good folks" know that gypsies fuck like rabbits and a little more won't matter, and even if it does, who gives a fuck. To coin a phrase. He's maybe seen his sons, or his friends' sons, beaten within an inch of their lives... and why? Because the fathers of the kids who did the beating lost some money on the games of chance. Always the same: you come into town, the "good folks" take what they want, and then you get busted out of town. Sometimes they give you a week on the local pea farm or a month on the local road crew for good measure. And then, Halleck, on top of everything, the final crack of the whip comes. This hotshot lawyer with three chins and bulldog jowls runs your wife down in the street. She's seventy, seventy-five, half-blind, maybe she only steps out too quick because she wants to get back to her place before she wets herself, and old bones break easy, old bones are like glass, and you hang around thinking maybe this once, just this once, there's going to be a little justice ... an instant of justice to make up for a lifetime of crap -'
* Also done with most of the inmates in ''Literature/TheGreenMile''; while they probably weren't on the outside, on Death Row most are repentant and sympathetic. One inmate, a black woman, could be argued to be sympathetic both in and out of prison since she killed an abusive and two-timing husband. Averted with William Wharton and John Coffey; the former because he was thoroughly unrepentant, the latter because [[spoiler:he didn't kill anyone]].
* John Kelly (later Clark) could be seen as one during his RoaringRampageOfRevenge in ''Without Remorse''.

%%* Elizabeth Bathory in ''Literature/CountAndCountess''.
* Peter in ''Nineteen Minutes'' in which a bullied teenager has snapped and committed a school shooting, killing most of his bullies and critically wounding another.
* The ''Franchise/DragonAge'' tie-in book ''Asunder'' has [[spoiler: Cole]], a [[spoiler: spirit and point of view character who kills people because it keeps him from feeling like he's fading]]. All his victims [[MercyKill want to die]] and he's very sympathetic, but he's still a murderer.

* In ''Literature/BillyBudd'', when the title character kills Claggart, Vere says, "Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!"
* The main character in Nedra Tyre's "The Gentle Miss Bluebeard," one Mary Anne Beard, made a bit of a hobby out of euthanasia.
* Janet Philp's book ''Burke - Now and Then'' is written from the perspective of William Burke (of the murderous duo Burke and Hare). In the present day, [[DeadGuyOnDisplay his skeleton]] muses on the wrong decisions he made that led him to be executed and dissected. William Hare is presented as being the mastermind who led the hesitant Burke into a life of crime, then turned Kings' Evidence and walked free while leaving his former partner to hang. Of course, this ''is'' Burke's side of the story, but historical accounts do seem to indicate that he was indeed the lesser of the two evils.

* Ambrose Bierce wrote there were four types of homicide: "felonious, excusable, justifiable and praiseworthy." Most examples on this page will skew towards the latter three-quarters of that list.
* ''Literature/CodexAlera'' Gaius Sextus sympathizes with [[spoiler:his wife Caria, who has been slowly poisoning him for years. Gaius, who is well into his 80s, selected Caria then a 20-something to wed in a shrewd political calculation and it was effectively a loveless marriage. When he learns her actions have taken about ten years from his life, he considers it karmic as their marriage had been going on for that long, and has her released, free from execution and their marriage]].
* ''Literature/{{Holes}}'' has Kate Barlow, who kills the sheriff who tried to blackmail a kiss from her in exchange for sparing the life of her boyfriend, whose only crime was kissing a white woman (Kate) while being black. However, she loses most of her sympathy points when she becomes a full-fledged outlaw, robbing and killing men who'd never done a thing to her.
* The murderer in ''Literature/CityOfDevils'' targets wealthy and powerful monsters who illegally abducted and turned humans into monsters while filming the transformation as a form of monster pornography. [[spoiler:The killer herself was just a young girl when she was taken and turned into a gremlin against her will.]]
* Pops up a few times in Creator/SophieHannah's works:
** Naomi Jenkins in ''Literature/HurtingDistance'' is ''heavily'' implied to have [[spoiler: smothered Robert Haworth to death]], but considering the man was a SerialRapist who took pleasure in psychologically breaking his victims, there's no sympathy for him whatsoever.
** In ''The Point of Rescue'', the victim was emotionally abusive towards her victim and [[spoiler: Amy only being five, she didn't understand the gravity of what she was doing when she pushed the lamp into the bath. She even dies trying to save Encarna, only to get electrocuted herself. Jonathan covers up the crime to protect his daughter.]]
** Aidan Seed in ''Literature/TheOtherHalfLives'' tells Ruth early on in the novel he killed a woman in his past, Mary Trelease. [[spoiler: the original Mary Trelease he killed was sexually molesting him from when he was around ten years older and a fourteen-year-old Aidan finally snapped and strangled her to death. His father took the fall for the crime out of guilt for not stopping it (and is implied to have also molested Aidan, just not as badly as she did), so Aidan was never suspected.]] It's impossible not to feel bad for Aidan, and that's not counting the utter hell he goes through over the course of the book.
** In ''The Carrier'' it turns out the murder of Francine was actually [[spoiler: a MercyKill. Lauren, Francine's caretaker, knew she was being verbally and psychologically abused by Tim, Kerry, and Dan but couldn't prove it and was too scared of her husband to seek outside help, until eventually she decides to put Francine out of her misery. Tim, realising how he's turned into the abuser he once considered Francine to be, willingly confesses to the murder to protect Lauren and punish himself for torturing a severely disabled woman.]]
* ''Literature/TwentySixSixtySix'': [[spoiler: Hans Reiter kills Leo Sammer, resulting in him changing his name to Archimboldi to help cover his tracks.]]
** [[spoiler: Sammer attempts to portray himself as this in his backstory, but fails to convince Hans.]]
* The protagonist of ''Literature/{{Beloved}}'' is an escaped slave who killed her toddler daughter (and attempted, but failed, to kill her other three children) when the slave catchers came to take them back to slavery. She had suffered so horribly in slavery that she truly believed that it would be better for them to be dead than to live like that.
* ''Literature/JaineAustenMysteries'':
** [[spoiler:Wells Dumont]] from ''Last Writes''. It was obviously wrong of [[spoiler:him]] to kill Quinn Kirkland, but considering Quinn [[spoiler:accidentally killed Wells' wife in addition to all the other terrible things he did]], it's hard to blame [[spoiler:the guy.]]
** [[spoiler:Cathy Kane]] from ''Pampered to Death'', [[spoiler:or as her name really is, Lorraine Sandoval]]. Years ago, AlphaBitch Mallory Francis forced [[spoiler:Lorraine's]] husband, an assistant director named Pablo out into a hurricane in order to get her fresh mangos, and as a result, Pablo was injured and forced to use a wheelchair. After fifteen years, [[spoiler:the poor man [[DrivenToSuicide shot himself]]. It's hard to blame Cathy for choking the life out of Mallory... [[SubvertedTrope or at least it isn't right up until "Cathy" reveals that in order to throw suspicion off herself by not going in under the Sandoval name, she murdered her own cousin to steal her identity]]]].

** "Blackout": A woman tries to seduce her 13-year-old grandson, after sexually abusing her son since he was 13. Her daughter (the boy's mother) finds out. Her mother has been emotionally abusing her for years. After berating her daughter for being ugly, the victim threatens that she still has power over her grandson, and the daughter drowns her.
** "Justice": A serial date rapist avoids punishment in 1982. The younger brother of one of his victims (who witnessed his sister's rape) follows the victims when they confront the rapist. They leave a gun at the scene. The brother picks it up and shoots the rapist. The victim was so bad the detectives flat-out tell the brother to plead self-defense.
** "A Perfect Day": Not for the primary case, but it's revealed through the course of the investigation that an abusive husband, [[spoiler:who was also the doer in the primary case,]] was murdered by his battered wife's lover. Vera and Jeffries quickly decide there's no reason the lover's indirect but obvious confession needs to be on the record.
** ''Series/ColdCase'' even manages to pull this off when the victim is a saint. Often, the murder is shown to be an AccidentalMurder and/or a crime of passion, committed in a moment of extreme emotional upset, leaving the killer [[MyGodWhatHaveIDone genuinely horrified by their actions.]]

** Heck, this was a slight problem with the series pilot - the murderer got too much screen time and became sympathetic by default. And then Columbo is a complete and utter {{jerkass}}. This was fixed with the second pilot, however. That's because the "pilot" was a stand-alone MadeForTVMovie and the murderer was supposed to be the main character. Columbo was an EnsembleDarkHorse.
** Donald Pleasance's killer wine connoisseur from "Any Port In A Storm" was nothing if not this. His murder was a crime of passion, committed because his brother was going to take away his vineyard - the only place where he'd ever felt truly happy.

** The episode "True Night" featured a SerialKiller focusing on members of a certain street gang. The killer turned out to be a comic book artist who had a psychotic break (and thus wasn't even aware of what he was doing) after said street gang forced him to watch them rape and murder his pregnant fiancée before brutally stabbing him and leaving him for dead. To top it off, he's played by Creator/FrankieMuniz. Even the team felt sorry for him.

** The killer from "Haunted", a previously non-violent man who had a psychotic break as a result of newly-unlocked memories of childhood trauma that he simply couldn't cope with.

** 'The Lesson', a man traumatised by witnessing the murder of his father during a robbery as a child. He lives a perfectly normal life until he receives a severe head injury in a car accident (the "trigger") and this prompts him to begin kidnapping people to replay the incident as human marionettes in order to change the outcome.
** 'Tabula Rusa', a suspected serial killer awakes from a coma with no memory of his past life. He escapes from custody but rather than wanting to kill again he returns to his dumping ground and uncovers a body, proving to himself he was guilty after all. He tries to commit suicide but Hodge talks him out of it and he surrenders to face his day in court. The team debate amongst themselves if this is now the same man who committed the murders in the first place?

** In "Blood Drops," an entire family is murdered except for the two daughters, one a teenager, the other much younger. Turns out the murder was arranged by the older girl - her father had been sexually abusing her for years, and the younger girl was actually her own daughter, the product of the abuse. When their father began turning his attention on the younger girl, it was the last straw, and she convinced a couple of her male classmates to kill not only him but also her mother and her brothers (for knowing about the abuse and not doing anything to protect her).

** In the "Fare Game" episode of ''Series/{{CSINY}}'', a chef is discovered to be the murderer of a millionaire who got her millions through multiple {{Frivolous Lawsuit}}s, of which he was one of the victims. After finally dragging himself out of bankruptcy, divorce, and a ruined life to try again working at a new restaurant and under a new name, she showed up at his new place with the intent of pulling the exact same scheme on his new boss, and he snapped, tracked her down, and killed her by letting her choke on one of the octopi served at the restaurant in an echo of the stunt she'd originally pulled as an excuse to sue him. The guy from the B-plot of the above was also sympathetic. He was the participant in a water gun game where players were encouraged to creatively trick targets into letting down their guard to be 'assassinated'. The victim tricked his soon-to-be killer, a desperate actor trying to provide for his family into thinking he got a part only to 'kill' him. The killer decided to get back at him by taking a blank gun and firing it into him from point-blank range, sadly that was so close that even the blanks would be lethal and it killed him.
** From the same series, there's the perp from "Prey": the victim was a stalker who had already caused one of his victims to commit suicide. The perp was another victim whom the law did very little to protect (a few restraining orders, the violations of which only got the stalker a few days in jail) and had even changed her name and moved to another city to escape, only for him to follow her. Feeling that she had no option other than killing herself or be killed, she finally killed him. The team feels pretty sympathetic towards her (even Mac, who. in an earlier episode. has shown disgust to a rape victim who killed rapists acquitted on technicalities) and Hawkes even reassures her that since she only left circumstantial evidence (the woman audited a class that Stella taught), it will be very hard for her to be convicted.

** Mitchell Forman from "A Many Splendored Thing". He murders a man over a pen that only costs $4.00, but it's made clear that it was caused by mental instability rather than malice and he tries to commit suicide out of guilt. He eventually turns himself in peacefully when Lewis talks him out of killing himself.
** Vaughn Perkins from "Bop Gun", one of the few perps to ever show regret for their crime. He's a sensitive teenager who shoots a woman during a botched mugging and ultimately enters a guilty plea for a life sentence as penance. Howard finds him so sympathetic that she initially tries to prove he's taking the fall for his accomplices, only stopping when he confesses that he did it in front of her.
** Downplayed with Larry Biedron from "Subway". He's a PsychopathicManchild who pushed a man into the path of an oncoming subway train and has done so before, but Bayliss points out he was institutionalized, but he was let out because of budget cuts even though he clearly still needed psychological help. That said, Pembleton and Bayliss are quick to mock him when he complains about being cold [[MoralMyopia while his victim, currently pinned between the train and the subway platform, is slowly and agonizingly dying from his injuries a few feet away from him.]]

** In "Dog And Pony Show", a police dog named Jake had been killed by an overworked woman who singlehandedly ran an animal shelter and put the dog down after mistaking it for a stray due to how ''tired'' she was.
* In the ''Series/{{House}}'' episode "The Tyrant", the team's Patient of the Week is the president of an African country who is planning to commit genocide as soon as he's released from the hospital. [[spoiler: After instinctively calling out a warning that saved the president's life from an assassination attempt, Dr. Chase decides that he can't morally save the man's life again and takes matters into his own hands by faking a blood test so the president would be misdiagnosed and given treatment that, given his actual condition, would kill him. By this point in the show we're so attached to Chase anyway that it's doubly hard to hold it against him.]]

** "Identity": An elderly man kills the guy who faked his identity and used it to sell his house on the market. The victim was counting on the guy being too old and feeble to do anything about it. The man's son and lawyer try to get him declared unfit to stand trial by way of dementia so he wouldn't be sent to prison, but he rightfully insists that he's totally competent and maintains that by killing the con artist, he regained his entire livelihood and identity that was stolen from him.

** The father from "Paternity", who found out his wife was having an affair and her lover was the real father of his son. He snaps and goes PapaWolf on her when she intends to divorce him and take her son away from him. It's even speculated that, had she divorced him, he'd still have to pay alimony and child support without having any parental rights whatsoever, despite not loving his son any less because of the reveal.

** In "Coerced", a schizophrenic man kidnaps a child, kills one man, and injures another, but it all comes back to the fact that he genuinely believes the kid is his son and that the other people were trying to take the kid away to hurt him. What's more, he had at one point achieved a stabilized mental condition through medication, but the group home he had been living in had cut him off his medication and kicked him out because he had seen them kill another resident through negligence and then stage her death as a suicide, and they wanted to ensure that he wouldn't be believed if he tried to report it. In the end, the schizophrenic man is sent to a treatment facility rather than prison, and the group home staff are charged with the crimes he committed as a result of their actions.

** In "Conscience", a young boy is revealed to have murdered another one in cold blood. Initially believing him to be remorseful and acting on abuse he suffered from camp, the team tries to get him to be sentenced to juvenile detention only to learn from the campers that the boy was a sociopath and that they couldn't try him as an adult unless they wanted him to walk free right then and there. The father of the murdered boy, amidst his grief, actually forgave and pitied the boy who killed his son because he also initially believed his lies. As he's leaving the courthouse, the boy mockingly apologizes to the father, which causes him to realize that the boy feels no remorse -- he grabs a bailiff's gun and shoots the boy in the chest, killing him. They're able to convince a jury to acquit the father as he most likely acted on grief and rationalize to themselves that while the father might not kill again, the boy certainly would have.
** In "Anchor", a defendant is being tried for murdering "anchor babies" (children who are born on American soil, thus becoming legal American citizens, even though their parents are illegally in the U.S.) and he and his defense attorney argue that he was indoctrinated by the anti-immigration rantings of a Rush Limbaugh-esque political pundit. [[spoiler:When said pundit takes the stand and creates chaos in the courtroom with his testimony, the defendant is acquitted. Before leaving the courtroom, the defendant whispers something in his lawyer's ear. The defendant's face changes to a smug smirk and the lawyer's is akin to OhCrap The next scene has Fin bemoaning the loss of the case at a bar when he gets a call from the attorney. When Fin comes to the office, the lawyer says that the defendant revealed to him that he murdered on his own accord instead of the political commentator's and he planned to kill more first-generation Americans. Fin tells him they need to stop the killer, but the camera shows there's no need. It cuts to the defendant lying dead on the floor of the lawyer's office in a pool of blood. The last shot shows the lawyer slowly surrendering his gun to Fin. While the lawyer's actions were technically illegal and would surely result in disbarment and life in prison, you can't help but sympathize with him for killing a bigoted sociopath if it meant saving the lives of several innocent children.]]

** "Victims" is already poised for this due to the fact that [[AssholeVictim the victims are sex offenders]], but it's even more poignant when we learn that [[spoiler:the killer was actually targeting HIV-positive sex offenders specifically because she had gotten HIV from a rape and wanted to spare potential future victims her fate.]]
** In "Confidential," an investment banker who had gotten away with murder two decades earlier and is on the verge of doing it again after the detectives have spent the episode in vain trying to land enough evidence to nail him is gunned down in the precinct by a man he defrauded years ago. The final scene of the episode reveals that [[spoiler:the man's lawyer was the one who told the murderer where to find him. She knew that [[AssholeVictim he'd raped and murdered two women]] and ruined an innocent man's life to cover his tracks, and she knew he'd never stop and there was nothing she could do within the legal system because of privilege rules (anything she revealed would have been thrown out as evidence), so she found another way to make sure he'd never be able to hurt anyone else. The detectives figure it out, but she's set up the situation very carefully to give herself plausible deniability, and while the detectives have fought to work around such things on past cases, they are clearly not inclined to make the effort here.]]

** Also, the murderer in "Killer Chat" turns out to be [[spoiler: the wife of a pedophile who had abused the couple's daughter]]. Despite the brutality of the murderer's crimes, one can't help but sympathize with the motive.
** The killer in "Sacrifice" becomes a lot more sympathetic when we learn his motive: the victim was developing a program that would have allocated educational resources based on a mathematical assessment of "potential", and the killer, who came from a poor neighborhood, knew that such a program would have denied him the opportunities that allowed him to escape and that other people like him would be denied pretty much any opportunity if the program were ever implemented.

* Maia Jeffries on ''Series/ShortlandStreet'', for her shooting of Ethan Pierce.

* The major theme of ''Series/HowToGetAwayWithMurder'' is that the people the protagonist's department defends are unambiguously guilty of the crime they committed, while several of these have turned out to be sympathetic enough, some are just trying to commit blatant KarmaHoudini.
** One episode had a son of a police officer (verbally and physically abusive, and the son himself spoke in a fashion that implied he had a degree of mental handicap) shoot his father when he started beating his mother. His guilt in the case was completely undeniable, but the legal team wants him to get off anyway because they decided he was enough of this and not a harm to anyone else.
** The biggest one however, is a result of the main overarching plot of the series; [[spoiler: the law students, while searching for evidence that Sam Fisher was guilty of killing one of their friends for refusing to abort their love child, accidentally throw him over a railing, and when he turns out to not be dead from that, he starts choking one of them to death, resulting in one of the others bludgeoning him to death with a trophy. In this case, he was such an AssholeVictim that ''his own wife'' thinks his death was justified and takes part in the cover-up to protect her students and reveal her husband's crime]].
* ''Series/MidsomerMurders'' has had a few (the show has an unbelievably high AssholeVictim ratio), some of them even having Barnaby's sympathy.
** One episode in a retirement home had [[spoiler:a woman perform a MercyKill on an elderly relative]] and tearfully ask Barnaby if it was the right thing to do. He doesn't have an answer.
** One murder seems to be connected to a decades-old serial killing spree, who was never caught. An old hotel owner is later murdered [[spoiler:by his own mother who knew him to be the original murderer, and thought he'd started again despite his promise]].
** One features one of Barnaby's heroes, a former officer who arrested a lord for murdering his wife, then quit the force to become a psychologist and help the lord out. [[spoiler:She'd murdered the wife for sleeping with her husband, then set up the lord, later murdering her husband due to his getting suspicious.]] Barnaby [[spoiler: doesn't exactly rush to prevent her running from his car into an oncoming train]].
** One remarkable AssholeVictim is a conservative landowner who does everything in his power to keep UsefulNotes/IrishTravellers off village property, even calling in Army buddies to do so. When he's murdered, it's discovered that [[spoiler:during the FalklandsWar, he was responsible for the death of an entire squad due to his incompetence, and his stepdaughter overheard. When he went to beat her, another habit of his, she killed him in self-defense.]] Unfortunately, some sympathy is lost when those involved try to pin the murder on one of the Travellers and accidentally kill him in the process, though Barnaby says he'll do what he can to help them.
** One episode's murderer is a young woman who's insulted every step of the way by her stepmother and stepsister. [[spoiler:It turns out she was the illegitimate daughter of a clergyman and used as blackmail to keep his rich father in line. She kills the stepsister (who'd started blackmailing ''her'' on finding out), and almost killed the stepmother and grandfather (crying that while she knew she'd never been loved, she'd at least hoped she'd been ''wanted'').]] Unfortunately, Barnaby arrives just in time.
* ''Series/{{Accused}}'': Frankie. After he's relentlessly bullied for trying to report bullying of his friend who eventually killed himself over it, he snaps [[spoiler: and kills his corporal, who led this]]. It doesn't help that he won't reveal any of this, however, giving him no mitigation. He gets 25 years in prison. Jake [[spoiler: murdered another boy]] only because he was coerced by the leader of his gang with the threat of being murdered himself if he didn't comply. He feels terrible about it and pleads guilty.
* ''Series/{{Misfits}}'': When the gang's killings aren't in self-defense or defense of others, it's either {{accidental murder}} or really hard to feel bad about it (generally due to an {{asshole victim}}).
* ''Series/CrossingLines'': A retired Russian hitwoman serves as one in the series finale, who is targeting leaders of a Romanian far-right group because supporters killed her husband just because he was black.
* ''Series/TheXFiles'': Most of the one-shot villains and monsters were to some extent sympathetic, but the real kicker is Rob from the episode "Hungry". Rob is a NiceGuy who, due to some unexplained quirk of biology, eats and only feels full after eating human brains. Most of the time, Rob keeps himself under control with a frankly dangerous cocktail of appetite suppressants and sheer willpower, and the few times he does eat someone, it's a person he has killed for justifiable reasons, usually self-defense.

* How about a sympathetic SerialKiller? How about two? Now make them your [[BeneathSuspicion sweet kindly old aunts]]. You have the plot of ''Theatre/ArsenicAndOldLace''.
* ''{{Theatre/Lizzie}}'' turns UsefulNotes/LizzieBorden into one, portraying her as a WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds due to her father's financial and sexual abuse. He's such a monster, you're actively rooting for her to get away with killing him.

* [[spoiler: The Origami Killer, aka Scott Shelby]], from ''VideoGame/HeavyRain'' is revealed to be this by the game's end.
* ''VideoGame/SaintsRow2'', mostly. Subverted when "The Boss" pulls off a few kills that are patently unjustifiable, reflecting how they have become a power-hungry cutthroat rather than an AntiHero gangster. Even unrepentant mass murderer Johnny Gat looks nice in comparison.
** Although, in the Boss's defense, most of those murders were either self-defense or revenge, with the exception of those caused by GameplayAndStorySegregation, the people they killed deserved it. However, by the end, they are still a ''very'' bad person. [[spoiler: However, while they struck first against Maero [[DisproportionateRetribution by disfiguring his face for insulting them]], [[MoralEventHorizon what Maero did]] [[TearJerker to Carlos]] [[DisproportionateRetribution as revenge]] made the murders of Jessica (who [[KickTheDog taunted him/her about it]]), Matt (though Matt also tried to strangle them), and, finally, Maero quite understandable.]] As for the similar incident with the Ronin, it's easy to say that this was ''before'' the Boss became such a bastard.
*** Ironically, in that story arc, The Boss's cruelest moment was when they didn't kill someone. It was when s/he pointlessly burned and crippled Matt's hand with fireworks for no other reason than to send a message to Maero since he was Maero's best friend (he only did tattoos for the gang, nothing more).
** Johnny is especially easy to sympathize with during the cemetery burial of a crime rival who was practically begging for it.
* Not all of the Splicers in ''VideoGame/{{BioShock|1}}'' are mindless psychopaths. It's hard to feel any pity for Toasty (a filthy lecher) or Ladysmith (a racist RichBitch). But then there's Pigskin, a teenage football player pushed into hunting you down on the threat of death at the hands of the other Splicers, who calls for his parents when he's not trying to kill you. Or Rosebud, who's trapped in the memory of the day Ryan's men took her daughter from her, and often hallucinates that ''you're'' the man who did it. You still have to kill them in self-defense, but it's hard not to feel bad about it.
** And by [[VideoGame/{{BioShock 2}} the sequel]], research into used ADAM proves that the stem cells are semi-sentient, absorbing the minds of their original users and injecting them into unsuspecting new users. So it turns out that about ten of the "core minds" were able to overpower the remaining Rapture population and have destroyed any semblance of their original memories and personalities. You've been killing people who don't even remember who they are.
* Peri from ''VideoGame/FireEmblemFates'' is a good example. When she was a child, she saw her mother murdered in front of her by one of the servants. The servant was punished, but Peri thought all servants were the same, so she'd kill all the servants whenever she was upset, [[NotSoDifferentRemark many of the servants having family themselves]]. She never understood that killing was wrong, as her father (who watched her do this) never said it was, and killing then became second nature to her. It takes some support conversations for her to resolve to improve.
* Widowmaker from ''VideoGame/{{Overwatch}}'' is a cruel, cold-blooded, mass-murdering assassin who takes delight in her many killings and plunging the world into chaos, and even has no problem with the prospect of ''[[WouldHurtAChild killing innocent children]]''. However, she's also been brainwashed, suffered extensive neural reconditioning, and went through biological alternation by terrorist group [[NebulousEvilOrganization Talon]] to make her into the inhuman killer she is today. [[CryForTheDevil It becomes especially tragic]] when you learn that she used to be a perfectly sweet NiceGirl who was HappilyMarried before she was kidnapped, went through said reconditioning, and was then forced to ''kill her own husband''.

* In ''Videogame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim'', a questline will have the player encounter Sinding, a [[OurWerewolvesAreDifferent werewolf]] imprisoned in the Falkreath jail for murdering a local child. Sinding explains that he is trying to control his transformations, and stole the Ring of Hircine, the artifact of the Daedric Prince Hircine, who is the Lord of the Hunt and creator of lycanthropes, for the Ring was said to be able to let someone control their transformations. Unfortunately, this angered Hircine and he cursed the Ring to make Sinding's transformations worse. The player can take the Ring, and thus themselves be subjected to uncontrolled transformations, but then Hircine will [[HuntingTheMostDangerousGame demand that they hunt down and kill Sinding for his sport]]. The player can do so, or [[TheHunterBecomesTheHunted rescue Sinding from Hircine's other hunters]], and either way [[WorthyOpponent Hircine will be pleased and lift the curse]], as both hunting down the prey or the prey turning on the hunter are expressions of his sphere.

* Thw ''VideoGame/TwistedMetal'' games, especially ''Black'', likes to stretch the limits of this trope. In ''Black'', most of the characters either killed a person or end up committing their first murder through their wish being granted. Most of them, however, have pretty understandable {{Freudian Excuse}}s -- Billy Ray Stillwell went through SanitySlippage when he was disfigured by a crop duster from the pilot his wife was cheating on him with, No-Face has his eyes and MouthStitchedShut by a malicious BackAlleyDoctor, Dollface ends up killing her boss after he tortured her by nailing a mask to her face, etc. BlackAndGrayMorality is in full-swing, here.

** ''Justice for All'':

** ''Investigations 2'' has, of all things, the ''BigBad'' turning out to be one of these. Here's a brief rundown: [[spoiler:As a kid, his father only valued him as a taste tester for his cooking. His father's colleague had him kidnapped to blackmail the father, and the colleague's son, who was also his best friend, was the kidnapper (though he was forced to do it). They both ended up locked in a car on a snowy night and would have frozen to death were it not for a certain assassin saving them. His father then fled the country after committing a murder, not caring whatsoever that he was abandoning his son. He ended up at what was apparently an OrphanageOfFear, where he one day witnessed the orphanage's owner, the chief prosecutor and body double of the President of Zheng Fa kidnap the real President, demand millions of dollars in ransom, ''then have him assassinated anyway'', and overheard them planning to kill the assassin too. [[KarmaHoudini All three of them got away with it.]] Naturally, [[MaddenIntoMisanthropy this destroyed his faith in pretty much everything.]] He conducted an elaborate plan to bring all three to justice, killing the body double himself while getting the others arrested. After all that, can you really blame him for what he became]]?

** [[spoiler:Marlon Rimes]], the culprit of the DLC case in ''Dual Destinies'', similar to [[spoiler:Acro from the second game. Even though he didn't really kill anyone (the victim fell back-first into a drained pool and Rimes tried to save him), he tried to kill the whale he thought was responsible for his girlfriend's death. Turns out, not only was it a different whale, but his girlfriend died because of a heart condition. Also, like Acro, he breaks down and demands a guilty verdict for him, if it means Sasha, the woman who reminds him of his girlfriend goes free. Because he really didn't kill anyone and had the Judge's sympathies, he was released not too long after and remains the only culprit who was never really guilty of anything]].
** ''Spirit of Justice'' has a few.

* ''VisualNovel/HigurashiWhenTheyCry'' has this in spades. Most of the main characters end up like this in [[GroundhogDayLoop some version of the world]]. Keiichi [[spoiler:killed Satoko's abusive uncle to protect her]], Rena [[spoiler:killed Satoko's uncle and his girlfriend to protect her father from their blackmail (and stop the girlfriend from throttling her)]]. [[spoiler:Shion]] is a subversion because, while starting off tragic, it's ruined by her [[spoiler: going AxCrazy on Keiichi, Mion, Rika, and Satoko even after realizing that she's wrong]]. It turns out much later that there were ways to avoid these and still solve the problems... but dang if it didn't feel good watching [[AssholeVictim some of those jerks]] get it.
** And then there is [[spoiler:the BigBad Miyo Takano, who masterminds everything because of her DarkAndTroubledPast and manipulation by [[GreaterScopeVillain her superiors]]. However, she [[MoralEventHorizon goes way too far]] and starts being a {{sadist}}ic {{Troll}} to the main heroes, which [[UnintentionallyUnsympathetic diminishes]] this status]].
** The author discusses this in the Staff Room portion of the Eye-opening Arc (Sound Novel only) where he talks about how much sympathy a murderer receives depends on that person's motives (and that the level of sympathy someone will have for the murderer will vary from person to person) while he still believes that murder is still murder regardless of one's motive. See the [[Analysis/HigurashiWhenTheyCry Higurashi analysis page]] for more on this.
** The sequel, ''VisualNovel/UminekoWhenTheyCry'', has [[spoiler:Beatrice/Sayo Yasuda, who sets up the Ushiromiya Massacre as payback for how [[AmbiguousGender they]] were treated by the family (thrown off a cliff as a baby, bullied by the maids, being a ChildByRape, [[LoveHurts painful love life]] and gender issues), and EP7 even reveals they were not even the actual culprit]].

* ''Film/TheCell'': Carl gets some sympathy from Catherine after she learns about his abusive past, although the film doesn't take the easy way out by claiming that his FreudianExcuse makes up for anything. Both the child Carl and the Demon King that Catherine faces off against are integral parts of his personality and there is no "redeeming" Carl by simply destroying the latter. The rational, adult Carl persona knows he is beyond redemption and [[DeathSeeker wants to die]].

* The Dutch movie ''TBS'' features a [[TheWoobie Woobieish]] convicted murderer who has been confined to a mandatory mental health clinic for criminals for allegedly murdering his father and sister. He escapes to track down his mother and prove his innocence, and along the way kidnaps a teenage girl who develops StockholmSyndrome. Over the course of the film, it becomes clear that he's a genuinely delusional psychotic, [[spoiler:ending up killing both his mother and the girl. He doesn't gain any pleasure from this whatsoever and voluntarily returns to prison at the end]].

* ''Series/TheFBI'': In "A Mouthful of Dust", Joe Cloud--an old army buddy of Erskine's-- returns home to find a man attacking his wife. In a fit of rage, he strangles him. Because the crime happened on TheRez, that makes it 'Crime on an Indian Reservation' and brings it under the jurisdiction of the FBI.

** When a man who spent fifteen years in prison for beating his wife until she could barely move, killing his young daughter, and chaining his infant son to the radiator to let him starve is found run over with a severed leg, nobody feels any sort of pity for him. The detectives, Van Buren, and Cragen (who was the commanding officer overseeing the original case) all hope he dies painfully. His prison social worker is arrested for the crime, but not before Van Buren earnestly pleads with her to tell her what happened so the DA can get her the best possible deal, even telling her that she wishes she could throw her a parade instead of charging her with anything, earnestly enough that it comes off as quite possibly more than just a tactic. At trial, it's discovered that, after she found out that the man had a new fiancee with children he spent time with, which violated his parole, the social worker tried to tell his parole officer, but he never "got around to" calling her back. They play a recorded therapy session where he only expresses happiness that he's getting out and that he'll be able to spend time with his fiancee's children, smugly saying that he's always been a good dad, to which the social worker can barely hide her revulsion. Finally, when she found out that the fiancee's young daughter sustained a broken wrist, she snapped and ran him over. Even Jack, who's known for being extremely hard-lined and often without sympathy for whoever he's prosecuting, no matter the circumstances, says that he would be happy to make a deal with her if she would admit that she ran him over. The jury comes back with a "not guilty" verdict in what Serena says is record time.

** In the Literature/HerculePoirot short story "Dead Man's Mirror", the murderer was [[spoiler: the long-forgotten biological mother of the victim's adopted daughter, and had killed to protect her]].