Homicide investigations occupy a special niche when it comes to criminal justice, attracting the attention and the interest of the general public and requiring enormous resources from the investigators. These crimes are most likely to disturb a community and, at the same time, some of the hardest to achieve a high clearance record for. This paper, however, focuses on homicide in the context of the United States, its laws, and relevant studies conducted in the area. To analyze the specifics of the homicide investigation, this paper refers to the Criminal Investigation. A method for reconstructing the past ’s chapter on homicide, as well as three other academic sources. The sources have been chosen to account for their relevancy and research of different homicide-related topics. This paper aims to discuss the main types of homicide and their key characteristics in the American context. It also aims to comment on the existing homicide investigation procedures, their efficiency, and the associated ethical dilemmas. Although all cases of homicide, an act involving taking the life of another human being, are at least ethically troubling, not all of them are considered criminal by definition. The existing framework identifies instances of justifiable homicide when the killing is lawful and excusable homicide, when the killing is unlawful but unintentional (Osterburg & Ward, 2019). The cases of criminal homicide are further separated into murder and manslaughter, with the key difference laying in whether the law determines the presence of malice in the act. Murder cases are then legally divided into the first and second degree, depending on whether the homicide was planned or occurred in the heat of passion (Osterburg & Ward, 2019). Manslaughter cases are characterized by the lack of malice behind them and can occur in self-defense or as a result of negligence. Although both murder and manslaughter are unlawful taking of human life, the two types involve different degrees of intentionality and warrant different levels of punishment. Expectedly, for the investigators and the lawyers involved in the case, it is often difficult to determine the appropriate type of case at hand. American homicide cases specifically are characterized by two common traits: men constitute the majority among both perpetrators and victims, and guns and firearms are widely used. With gun possession and carrying being conditionally allowed in the United States, its’ heavy involvement in homicide cases is a uniquely American trait. Between 2006 and 2012, more than half of the homicide cases were committed by a fire gun (Robinson & Maxwell, 2017). Men being comparatively more likely to commit or become a victim of a homicide is an international phenomenon, but particularly in the U.S., it coincides with the high rates of racist violence and mass shootings. Criminal studies continue to supply new theories and explanations for why murder occurs in society, but so far, it has been proven as a dark historical constant. It is, therefore, no surprise that homicide investigation exists as a special area of its own. Homicide investigations focus on gathering statements from those who possess th