Melville Fuller

“ We have a court that performs one office, and the jury another, and the executive arm of the government another. Yet the law of self-defense puts all of these mighty elements of power into the hands of one man, and it may be, in a given case, that he is not a very intelligent man, either ”

“ Men have sometimes seen the events of a lifetime pass in a few minutes before their mental vision. Thought is sometimes referred to as the very symbol of swiftness. There is no time so short but that within it the human mind can form a deliberate purpose to do an act; and if the intent to do mischief to another is thus formed, as a deliberate intent, though after no matter how short a period of reflection, it none the less is malice."
Manslaughter was defined, and the distinction between that and murder, and the right of self-defense invoked by counsel in the case, was then explained. ”

“ If there is a condition where the other party at the time of the killing is doing an act of violence upon him, and he is in the right, and that would take his life unless he avoided it, and he can avoid it otherwise than by killing, and he does not do it, that is a case where he would be guilty of manslaughter, because that is a failure to observe his duty, and a use of the law of self-defense hastily. He must not forget that he is judge, jury, and executioner when he is sitting in that tribunal out in the woods or country. ”

“ Especially is that the rule applicable in this day, when a man with the rapidity almost of the batting of an eye or a flash of light may execute a purpose to kill. He may conceive a purpose, and instantly with its conception draw his deadly weapon, and execute his purpose before you can bat an eye. ”

“ Circumstantial evidence means simply that you take one fact that has been seen, that is produced before you by evidence, and from that fact you reason to a conclusion.' The exception gives a color to this part of the charge which it will not bear, namely, that it amounted to a denunciation of persons 'who were slow to act on circumstantial evidence,' whereas the court was inveighing against the declaration that it is cruel and criminal to convict a man upon circumstantial evidence, and that the condition of the mind cannot be found in that way. ”

“ The law says, as I will read to you presently, that the deliberate selection and use of a deadly weapon is evidence of the existence of malice aforethought, provided the party had no right to use that weapon, or provided there is an absence of mitigating facts when he did use it.' That is to say, that when a homicide is committed by weapons indicating design, then it is not necessary to prove that such design existed at any definite period before the fatal act. ”

“ When a party is in such a condition he is the judge upon the bench and the jury in the box; and not only that, but he is the executioner. He finds what the facts are as a jury, and he makes an application of the law that he finds as a judge to these facts that he finds as a jury, he enters up a judgment, and he then and there, as a marshal, kills, in the furtherance of the judgment. ”

“ This is a declaration of either fools or knaves, sympathetic criminals, or men who have not ability enough to know what circumstantial evidence is, or to perform the ordinary duties of citizenship. When you consider that these two mental conditions the fact that the act was done willfully, and done with malice aforethought-can never in any case be found in any other way than by circumstantial evidence, you can see the potency in every case of that class of testimony. ”

“ By statute in England and in many of the states it has been provided that a party may, in case the witness shall, in the opinion of the judge, prove adverse, by leave of the judge, show that he has made at other times statements inconsistent with his present testimony ”

“ Exercise it, too, when he wasn't confronted with acts that inflamed him, or that infuriated him, but exercised it when he was an intelligent man, and just man, as our presidents have always been, and a fair-minded man? ”

“ It is only when the paper is written, not by design, but unconstrainedly, and in the natural manner, so as to bear the impress of the general character of the party's writing, as the involuntary and unconscious result of constitution, habit, or other permanent cause, and therefore of itself permanent, that it furnishes, if otherwise admissible, any satisfactory test of genuineness. ”

“ It was suggested by counsel for the defendant that the objection was made as soon as it was discovered that notice had not been given in respect of this witness, but we are of opinion that the discretion of the trial court was properly exercised upon the question. Counsel ought not to sit by and listen to the testimony in chief of a witness before inquiring whether his name has been furnished to the defendants. ”