Horace Gray

“ By the common law, neither deliberate premeditation, nor express malice or intent to kill, is required to make an unlawful homicide murder, but malice may be implied from the use of a deadly weapon or other significant facts; and any unlawful killing without malice, express or implied, is manslaughter. It has often been held, and was formerly considered to be settled law, that a wanton killing without provocation could not, by reason of being done by a man voluntarily intoxicated to any degree, not amounting to insanity, be excused, or reduced from murder to manslaughter. ”

“ People, 104 U.S. 631, this court recognized the general rule that, at common law, voluntary intoxication affords no excuse, justification, or extenuation of a crime committed under its influence, and went no further in favor of admitting evidence of intoxication than to hold that a defendant, indicted under a territorial statute establishing degrees of murder, and requiring deliberate premeditation to constitute murder in the first degree, might show that, at the time of the killing, he was in such a condition, by reason of drunkenness, as to be incapable of deliberate premeditation. ”

“ The instruction requested was that if the defendant, at the time of killing the woman, was so drunk as to render the formation of any specific intent to take her life impossible on his part, and, before becoming drunk, he entertained no malice towards her, and no intention to take her life, he could not be convicted of murder. ”