Attempted murder

“ But if, on a sudden quarrel, parties presently fetch their weapons, and go into a field and fight, and one of them is killed, that is manslaughter, because it is presumed that their blood never cooled. Otherwise, if the parties appoint the next day to meet, or even the same day, at such an interval as that their passion may have subsided, or if{616} from circumstances in the case, it may be reasonably presumed that their judgment had controlled the first transports, if death then ensue, it is murder. ”

“ I have committed no crime — what has been done, that you are going to murder me?" was my reply. My master then asked me why I had followed the young lady and her brother, who went from the house the evening before, and murdered her? Astonished and terrified at the charge of being a murderer, I knew not what to say ”

“ It must, however, be remarked, both in this and every other case of homicide in consequence of provocation, that if there be sufficient time for the heat of passion to subside, or for reason to interpose, and the offended person take away the life of the offender, such act is deliberate revenge, and is accordingly punished as murder. ”

“ When a witness, for example, swears, directly and unhesitatingly, that he saw the prisoner inflict a wound, with a deadly weapon, upon another person—that he saw that other person instantly fall, and die shortly after, this is positive evidence of something. Yet the act may be murder, or it may be manslaughter, or it may be justifiable homicide. Murder consists of three parts, the malice prepense, the blow inflicted or means employed, and the death ensuing, within a time prescribed by law. There can be no murder, if either of these parts be absent. ”

“ Every murder perpetrated by poison, lying in wait, or nay other kind of willful, deliberate, malicious, and premeditated killing; or committed in the perpetration of, or attempt to perpetrate, any arson, escape, murder, kidnapping, treason, espionage, sabotage, aggravated sexual abuse or sexual abuse, burglary, or robbery; or perpetrated from a premeditated design unlawfully and maliciously to effect the death of any human being other than him who is killed, is murder in the first degree. Any other murder is murder in the second degree. ”

“ And, if the circumstances show a killing 'with deliberate mind and formed design,'-with comprehension of the act, and determination to perform it, the elements of self-defense being wanting,-the act is murder. ”

“ In fact, it was reserved for this incredible monster and his associate fiends to reduce murder to a system, and to establish a regular traffic in the bodies of their victims. Ordinary homicides slay from passion or revenge; the murders they commit are the product of an ungovernable and overmastering impulse, which hurls reason from her seat, and, in the wild conflict of guilty passion, precipitates them into the commission of acts which are no sooner done than they would perhaps give the universe were they undone. ”

“ And yet, strange as is this circumstance, it is still more a riddle how the murderer could have escaped from the room where he had shot down his victim, for the keys in both doors were in the locks from the inside. We have evidently to do here with a criminal of very unusual cleverness and it is therefore not surprising that there has been no clue discovered thus far. The only thing that is known is that this murder was an act of revenge.
The entire city was in excitement over the mystery, even the police station was shaken out of its usual business-like indifference. ”

“ There is yet another manner of killing which the Law punishes with the utmost severity, which is resisting an officer, civil or criminal, in the execution of his office (arresting a person) so that he be slain, yet though he did not produce his warrant, the offence will be adjudged murder. ”

“ Far this reason the seconds at a premeditated duel have been held guilty of murder, nor will the justice of the English Law be defeated where a person appears to have intended a less hurt than death, if that hurt arose from a desire of revenge in cool blood; for if the person dies of the injury it will be murder. So, also, where the revenge of a sudden provocation is executed in a cruel manner, though without intention of death, yet if it happen, it is murder. ”

“ They were of the most atrocious character—murders committed, not from the ordinary motive of revenge, or of robbery, or to escape from the punishment of other offences,—but its object was indiscriminate murder for dissection, and cold-blooded [293] traffic, rendering the crime profitable in proportion to the number of its victims. These atrocities seem to have attracted the notice of the Lord Advocate, whose conduct, in all these proceedings, he considered highly meritorious. ”

“ Nor need we wonder that the most credulous should have been startled by the recital of such atrocious cruelty, which far surpasses any thing that is usually found in the records of crime. The offence of murder, dreadful as it is, is unhappily too familiar in our criminal proceedings ”

“ The crowd rushing and eddying to and fro, the night, the yells, the pale faces, many fright [Pg 134] ened people trying in vain to extricate themselves, the attacked man, not yet freed from the jaws of death, looking like a corpse, the silent, resolute half dozen policemen, with no weapons but their little clubs, yet stern and steady through all those eddying swarms—made indeed a fitting side scene to the grand tragedy of the murder. ”

“ It is provided, as I humbly and devoutly believe, by the divine justice itself, that no matter how craftily murder is planned, there is always some point where the skill and cunning of the assassin fails him. ”

“ Fearful, from all they had observed, that murder had been committed, they now ran with all their speed in the direction which the two persons had taken; and having arrived at a dark and lonely spot, to which they were attracted by groans of agony, they beheld, by the faint light of the moon, whose rays now penetrated through the thick foliage above their heads, the form of a man elegantly attired, stretched upon the earth and weltering in his blood, while by his side lay the pistol with which the fatal and cruel deed had been committed, and which the assassin had left behind him. ”

“ The exceptional treatment of hanging and then burning the body of the criminal was owing to the crime being, over and above that of murder, the particularly heinous one, in the eye of the old laws, of petit treason, the murdered person being the master of, and person in authority over, the assassin. ”

“ In the language of the statute, murder is the unlawful killing of a human being, in the peace of the people, with malice aforethought, either expressed or implied. The unlawful killing may be perpetrated by poisoning, striking, starving, drowning, stabbing, shooting, or by any other of the various forms or means by which human nature may be overcome and death thereby occasioned. Express malice is that deliberate intention unlawfully to take away the life of a fellow-creature, which is manifested by external circumstances capable of proof. ”

“ Therefore, if unintentionally, or by mistake, believing him to be somebody else, they undertook to arrest the defendant, and the defendant resisted such arrest, and, in such resistance, killed the deceased, or killed the parties attempting such arrest, such killing would not be murder, but would be man-slaughter.' The court gave this instruction with this modification: 'Unless such killing was done in such a way as to show brutality, barbarity, and a wicked and malignant purpose. ”

“ What guidance the jury got from the explanation of what constitutes murder is not quite clear to the lay mind, however satisfactory it may have appeared to the judge.
"Gentlemen," he stated, with admirable lucidity, "murder is where a man is murderously killed. The killer in such a case is a murderer. Now, murder by poison is just as much murder as murder with a gun, pistol, or knife. It is the simple act of murdering that constitutes murder in the eye of the law. Don't let the idea of murder and manslaughter confound you. Murder is one thing; manslaughter is quite another. ”

“ On murders committed in deliberate revenge, or to remove a stumbling block in the murderer’s path, or in an insatiate craving for notoriety, is there reason to suppose that the punishment of death has the direct effect of an incentive and an impulse?
A murder is committed in deliberate revenge. The murderer is at no trouble to prepare his train of circumstances, takes little or no pains to escape, is quite cool and collected, perfectly content to deliver himself up to the Police, makes no secret of his guilt, but boldly says, “I killed him. ”

“ And, secondly, if he be proved to have died of the injury within that time, we must duly weigh the previous circumstances and the provocation, to ascertain, if the act done be manslaughter or murder.
Those, who vociferate, most loudly, against the law, for its hesitancy, and demand the immediate descent of the executioner’s axe, upon the neck of the victim, will be the very first fervently to supplicate, for the law’s most merciful carefulness of life, should a father, a brother, or a son be charged with crime, and involved in the complicated meshes of presumptive evidence. ”

“ There are none of the elements present which may, and often do, justify a jury in reducing the charge of murder to that of manslaughter. There is no question, so far as I have been able to discover, of sudden provocation, of accident, or anything of that sort. Whoever committed this crime must, if you believe the evidence, have done so knowingly, designedly, and with premeditation, and therefore your finding, if you find against the prisoner must be one of wilful murder. ”

“ There are few great crimes in proportion to the population, nor do we ever hear of such atrocities as those classes of murders which so frequently blacken the page of our modern history. Homicide is more common than actual murder, and is often the result of a sudden quarrel where knives are drawn, and a fatal stab in passion constitutes the offence. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As to duels where the blood has once cooled, there is no doubt but he who kills another is guilty of wilful murder; or even in case of a sudden quarrel, if the person killing appear by any circumstance to be master of his temper at the time he slew the other, then it will be murder. Not that the English Law allows nothing to the frailties of human nature, but that it always exerts itself where there appears to have been a person killed in cool blood. ”

“ In [265] some cases, no distinction is made between accidental homicide and murder; sometimes a gun which has been the cause of an accident is seized instead of the owner, and held till he pays several slaves for it. Sometimes, however, the view is taken that the man or his gun may have been bewitched, and steps are taken to find out and punish the person who has done this. ”

“ Fugitives might, in such a bill, be obliged to work two days for every one they absent themselves.
[43] The shooting at a wild fowl, and killing a man, is homicide by misadventure. Shooting at a pullet, without any design to take it away, is manslaughter; and with a design to take it away, is murder. ”

“ If any one is murdered, and the murderer is not discovered, the jumby of the victim cannot rest, but is continually roaming about the spot where the bloody deed was committed, or else tormenting the perpetrator of the crime, until they are obliged to confess the fault. I have heard an old woman talk of a murder, which was committed some time ago, where the spirit of the murdered woman pointed out to her friends the person of her destroyer. ”

“ But murder will out sooner or later,—'Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed.' In spite of all their infernal cunning and midnight secresy, justice has overtaken these monsters, and never again may the annals of any age or nation be stained with such revolting criminality. ”

“ Whoever with intent to torture (as defined in section 2340) , maims, or disfigures, cuts, bites, or slits the nose, ear, or lip, or cuts out or disables the tongue, or puts out or destroys and eye, or cuts off or disables a limb or any member of another person’ or whoever, and with like intent, throws or pours upon another person, any scalding water, corrosive acid, or caustic substance shall be fines and/or imprisoned not more than twenty years. This is a specific intent crime.
c. Murder, 18 U.S.C. § 1111 (U) Murder is the unlawful killing of another human being with malice aforethought. ”

“ The man had no remedy. In a fit of passion he killed the woman, when waylaying him at midnight on his beat, and was hanged for the crime. (Case of Constable Cook, June, 1894.)
(d) Murder.
The rule of the Common Law which prescribes hanging as the punishment for murder is practically abolished for females who murder men. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Where there is a willful killing without deliberation and not with malice aforethought, the offense is 'manslaughter."↑ Self-defense and insanity are defenses. Rev.Stat.1939, § 4049, Mo.R.S.A. Justifiable or excusable homicide is a defense (id. § 4381) as those terms are defined. Id. §§ 4379, 4380.↑ 'The law presumes the killing was murder in the second degree, in the absence of proof of attendant circumstances which tend to raise the killing to murder in the first degree or to reduce it to manslaughter.' State v. ”