A suicide pact is an agreed plan between two or more individuals to commit suicide. The plan may be to die together, or separately and closely timed. Suicide pacts are important concepts in the study of suicide, and have occurred throughout history, as well as in fiction.
Suicide pacts are generally distinct from mass suicide. The latter refers to incidents in which a larger number of people kill themselves together for the same ideological reason, often within a religious, political, military or paramilitary context. Suicide pacts, on the other hand, usually involve small groups of people (such as married or romantic partners, family members, or friends) whose motivations are typically non-ideological.
A suicide pact negotiated over the internet, often between complete strangers, is an Internet suicide.
In England and Wales, suicide pact is a partial defence, under section 4 of the Homicide Act 1957, which reduces murder to manslaughter. In Northern Ireland, this defence is created by section 14 of the Criminal Justice Act (Northern Ireland) 1966 (c. 20) (N.I.).
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Famous quotes containing the words suicide and/or pact:
“However great a man’s fear of life, suicide remains the courageous act, the clear-headed act of a mathematician. The suicide has judged by the laws of chance—so many odds against one that to live will be more miserable than to die. His sense of mathematics is greater than his sense of survival. But think how a sense of survival must clamour to be heard at the last moment, what excuses it must present of a totally unscientific nature.”
—Graham Greene (1904–1991)
“I make a pact with you, Walt Whitman—
I have detested you long enough.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)