General :: Kill Bash Processes "nicely"?

I'm trying to avoid kill -9 for the reasons described in the Useless Use of Kill -9 form letter. Is this function sufficient, or do I need to kill the kill processes after a timeout or take care of other subtleties?

soft_kill()
{
# Try to avoid forcing a kill
# @param $1: PID
kill $1 || kill -INT $1 || kill -HUP $1 ||
(echo "Could not kill $1" >&2; kill -KILL $1)
}

As an aside, what's a better name for this function? The current name reminds me of "Killing Me Softly", and manslaughter sounds a bit severe. Maybe spoon_kill (Google it)?