David Josiah Brewer

“ It cannot be that one of the risks covered by a contract of insurance is the crime of the insured. There is an implied obligation on his part to do nothing to wrongfully accelerate the maturity of the policy. Public policy forbids the insertion in a contract of a condition which would tend to induce crime, and as it forbids the introduction of such a stipulation it also forbids the enforcement of a contract under circumstances which cannot be lawfully stipulated for. ”

“ It appears to me that it is a reasonable objection to the legality of a wager that it has a tendency to influence and pervert the course of criminal justice. There ought to be a disposition in every person to come forward and give any evidence which he may be in possession of, tending to insure either the acquittal or conviction of a person lying under a criminal charge ”

“ The fair and just interpretation of a contract of life insurance made with the assured is that the risk is of death proceeding from other causes than the voluntary act of the assured producing or intended to produce it. . . . The extinction of life by disease, or by accident, not suicide voluntary and intentional by the assured while in his senses, is the risk intended; and it is not intended that, without the hazard of loss, the assured may safely commit crime.'
But the stress of the plaintiffs' contention rests on the allegation that the insured was unjustly convicted and executed ”