William Feilden Craies

“ Under English law the provocation must be by acts and not by words or gestures, and must be serious and not trivial, and the killing must be immediately after provocation and while the slayer has lost his self-control in consequence of the provocation. The provocation need not be by assault or violence, and perhaps the best-recognized example is the slaying by a husband of a man found committing adultery with the slayer’s wife. ”

“ Homicide is justifiable and not criminal when the killing is done in the execution of the law. The most important case of justifiable homicide is the execution of a criminal in due course of public justice. This condition is most stringently interpreted. “To kill the greatest of malefactors deliberately, uncompelled, and extrajudicially is murder. ”

“ Much labour has been expended by many jurists in efforts to create a scientific and acceptable classification of the various forms of unlawful homicide which shall properly define the cases which should be punishable by law and the appropriate punishment. Their efforts have resulted in the establishment in almost every state except the United Kingdom of statutory definitions of the crime, beginning with the French penal code and going down to the criminal code of Japan. ”

“ America.—The most notable difference between England and the United States in regard to the law on this subject is the recognition by state legislation of degrees in murder. English law treats all unlawful killing not reducible to manslaughter as of the same degree of guilt in law. American statutes seek to discriminate for purposes of punishment between the graver and the less culpable forms of murder. ”

“ Cl. 176 reduces culpable homicide to manslaughter if the person who causes death does so “in the heat of passion caused by sudden provocation”; and “any wrongful act or insult of such a nature as to be sufficient to deprive any ordinary person of the power of self-control may be provocation if the offender acts upon it on the sudden, and before there has been time for his passion to cool. Whether any particular wrongful act or insult amounts to provocation and whether the offender was deprived of self-control shall be questions of fact ”

“ The death penalty is freely imposed but not for homicide. “If a man strike a gentleman’s daughter that she dies, his own daughter is to be put to death, if a poor man’s the slayer pays 1/2 mina.” In the Mosaic law the general command “Thou shalt not kill” of the Decalogue is in terms absolute. In primitive law homicide, however innocent, subjected the slayer to the lawful vengeance of the kindred of the slain, unless he could make some composition with him. ”

“ Accordingly, if he strikes and kills his assailant after the assault is over, this is not excusable homicide. But if the assault has been premeditated, as in the case of a duel, the death of either antagonist has under English law always been held to be murder and not excusable homicide. The excuse of self-defence covers the case in which a person in defence of others whom it is his duty to protect—children, wife, master, &c.—kills an assailant. ”

“ In the Indian penal code the definitions of murder are so drawn as to limit the offences to cases where it was actually intended to cause death or bodily injury by the acts or omissions of the slayer, and the definition of culpable homicide short of murder is so drawn as to exclude the forms of unintentional manslaughter due to neglect of duty, e.g. ”

“ The whole development of the substantive law as to murder rests on judicial rulings as to the meaning of malice prepense coupled with the extrajudicial commentaries of Coke, Hale and Foster; for parliament, though often tempted by bills and codes, has never ventured on a legislative definition. ”

“ The compensation payable is what the surviving relative has lost by the death, and under the Workmen’s Compensation Act 1906 (in all cases to which it applies) the employer is liable even without negligence to compensate the dependants of an employee killed by an accident arising out of and in the course of the employment; and in such cases even if the death was due to serious and wilful misconduct by the employee, compensation is payable. ”

“ Further, “an arrest shall not necessarily reduce the offence from murder to manslaughter because an arrest was illegal, but if the illegality was known to the offender it may be evidence of provocation”; (cl. 177) “culpable homicide not amounting to murder is manslaughter.” ”