First-degree murder

“ It is true that we generally give great deference to the States in defining the elements of crimes. I fail to see, however, how that truism advances the plurality's case. There is no failure to defer in recognizing the obvious: that premeditated murder and felony murder are alternative courses of conduct by which the crime of first-degree murder may be established. ”

“ More precisely, there are persons who, while not totally insane, possess such low mental powers as to be incapable of the deliberation and premeditation requisite to statutory first degree murder. Yet under the rule adopted by the court below, the jury must either condemn such persons to death on the false premise that they possess the mental requirements of a first degree murderer or free them completely from criminal responsibility and turn them loose among society. ”

“ Meaning what he said, he was able to convince the jury.
"Gentlemen of the jury," he began, "the indictment in this case is manslaughter in the first degree. That is homicide without intent to effect death by a person committing or attempting to commit a misdemeanor. The People will show that on the eleventh day of March of this year the defendant, while operating an automobile on the highways of this county in a reckless and lawless manner, killed John Drummond, a traffic policeman, who was attempting to arrest her. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the solitude of that house, with ample fire in the stove, with ample wit of woman nobody has suggested that as to the first crime there was not ample opportunity, ample means and that nothing could be suggested as a reason why all the evidence of that crime could not have been amply and successfully concealed. But as to the second murder the question is one of more difficulty. I cannot answer it. You cannot answer it. You are neither murderers nor women. You have neither the craft of the assassin nor the cunning and deftness of the sex. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In its charge to the jury, the court, among other things, said: 'What, then, is murder? There are only two kinds of felonious homicide known to the laws of the United States. One is murder, and the other is manslaughter. There are no degrees of murder.' 'There is no definition of 'murder' by any United States statute. We resort to the common law for that. By the common law, murder is the unlawful killing of a human being in the peace of the state, with malice aforethought, either express or implied. ”

“ Voluntary and Involuntary Homicide
It is generally [131] asserted that primitive societies recognise no distinction either between wilful murder and manslaughter (which presumes a certain degree of guilt) , or even between wilful murder and accidental slaying. The reason assigned is that bloodshed, even in comparatively advanced civilisations, is a ‘civil’ rather than a ‘criminal’ offence—a matter for damages and compensation rather than for exemplary punishment. Thus Glotz [132] says: ‘L’intention n’est rien: le fait est tout. ”

“ If you find the defendant gave him the mortal wound, you will then inquire whether the killing was lawful or unlawful. In law every killing of one human being by another of sound mind, is unlawful, except such as the law excuses or justifies.
If a person when doing a lawful act, by accident kills another, it is excusable homicide. If a person kills another on a sudden attack in defence of himself, wife, child, parent, or servant, it is excusable homicide. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ An inquest was held on the body of a man who had been murdered on the high road, and at first it was thought that the murder had been committed by robbers, but on examination the corpse was found to be fully clothed and bearing the marks of some ten or more wounds from a sickle. The coroner pointed out that robbers kill their victims for the sake of booty, which evidently was not the case in the present instance, and declared revenge to be at the bottom of it all. He then sent for the wife of the murdered man, and asked her if her husband had lately quarrelled with anybody. ”

“ But the present was the first instance of murder alleged to have been perpetrated with the aforethought purpose and intent of selling the murdered body as a subject for dissection to anatomists: it was a new species of assassination, or murder for hire: and as such, [10] no less than from the general horror felt by the people of this country at the process, from ministering to which the murderers expected their reward, it was certainly calculated to make a deep impression on the public mind, and to awaken feelings of strong and appalling interest in the issue of the trial. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But the jury might well have inferred, from the instruction, as modified, that they were at liberty to return a verdict of murder because alone of the way or mode in which the killing was done, even if they believed that, apart from the way in which the life of the deceased was taken, the facts made a case of manslaughter, not of murder. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But they argue that homicide is a species of malefaction. I admit that it is a great crime, as great as sacrilege or treason. But these crimes are dealt with each according to its own particular laws. Moreover, they compel me to undergo trial in this place of public assemblage, where all men charged with murder are usually forbidden to appear; and furthermore they would commute to a fine in my case the sentence of death imposed by law on all murderers, not for my benefit, but for their own private gain, thereby defrauding the dead of lawful satisfaction. ”

“ He did not deny that his client had been a wild and reckless man, and it would be quite possible for one with such a temperament to use threats which he did not intend to carry out. He appealed to the jury to spare the man’s life. However bad he might have been, he was all the less fitted to die. But he had stronger grounds, and he asked whether on the uncorroborated testimony of that woman they were going to condemn this man to die? He concluded with a powerful appeal to the jury.
In summing up, the learned judge briefly defined murder as distinguished from manslaughter. ”

“ Murderers come into my shop, I won’t say every day, but often. My dear friend, the world is full of them. You will ask, if that is so why are so comparatively few murders committed? For this reason, very few people have the motive for slaying a fellow man or woman. I myself cannot remember a single time in my life when the commission of a murder would have benefited me much, and when that murder could have been committed by me with reasonable chance of not being discovered. ”