Homicide

“ 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. ”

“ Our fourth category of the modes of blood-vengeance is intended to comprise all the methods of punishing homicide which are characteristic of fully developed social organisms, whether in ancient or in modern times. Homicide, which was originally conceived as an outrage affecting only a family or clan, may come to be regarded as a crime against the body politic, as an insult to the majesty of the State, its laws, its gods, or its governors. ”

“ All lesser criminal homicides are embraced within the definition of manslaughter in the second degree.
“Homicides not criminal are classed as justifiable and excusable homicide. Homicide is justifiable when committed in the lawful defense of the slayer or his wife or child or master or servant or anybody connected with him in close relation.
“The defense here is that the defendant was insane at the time he committed the act and the law applicable in the defense of insanity is found in sections 20 and 21 of the Penal Code. ”

“ But the end of the second line, as it stands, cannot possibly be taken to refer to accidental homicide, because the verb βουλεύειν usually means ‘to plot’ or ‘to resolve,’ and therefore implies an element of deliberation. Wilful murder is not expressly mentioned, save in so far as the slaying of a homicide exile abroad is decreed to be equivalent to murder. There is also a reference to justifiable homicide in self-defence. ”

“ Justifiable homicide is that which is committed in the necessary defense of one's person, house, or goods, or of the person of another when in danger of injury; or that which is committed in lawfully attempting to take a person for felony committed, or to suppress a riot, or to keep the peace. Excusable homicide is the killing of a person by accident, or while lawfully employed, without any design to do wrong. ”

“ This distinction between murder and justifiable homicide se defendendo, or homicide per infortunium, was an important reform in our law, which at that period did not take into consideration 3the frail condition of mankind, and the influence of our passions, the more to be dreaded from the state of ignorance and superstition in which the nation was plunged. ”

“ To cause a rapid disappearance of the proofs of a homicide, with a view to escape the investigations of justice, murderers have been known literally to make hash of the victim which was subsequently eaten by themselves and others. ”

“ In almost no case was there what an intelligent, civilized man would regard as an adequate reason for the homicide. They killed because they felt like killing, and yielded to the impulse, whatever its immediate origin. ”

“ In case of death by violence, the nearest relative of the slayer is found and punished. Homicide in obedience to law is therefore common among them. Their law is blood for blood, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. ”

“ Homicide is the killing of a human being, and it may or may not be criminal. But if the homicidal act is done with the intent to kill; if that intention has been deliberately formed—that is to say, if the homicidal act has been premeditated; then that homicide is wilful murder.
“Now the person who killed the deceased came to the place where the act was done provided with a solution of a very powerful and uncommon vegetable poison. He was also provided with a very special appliance—to wit, a hypodermic syringe—for injecting it into the body. ”

“ Homicide.—The legal sense of the term homicide excludes such injuries as are the result of either accident or of suicide. It embraces murder or wilful homicide, manslaughter or culpable homicide, casual homicide, and justifiable homicide. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ So that, gentlemen, every instance of one man's killing another is not a crime, much less a crime to be punished with death. But to descend to more particulars.
The law divides homicide into three branches; the first is "justifiable," the second "excusable," and the third "felonious." Felonious homicide is subdivided into two branches; the first is murder, which is killing with malice aforethought; the second is manslaughter, which is killing a man on a sudden provocation. Here, gentlemen, are four sorts of homicide ”

“ Having begun to speak of homicide, let us endeavour to lay down laws concerning every different kind of homicide; and, first of all, concerning violent and involuntary homicides. If any one in an athletic contest, and at the public games, involuntarily kills a friend, and he dies either at the time or afterwards of the blows which he has received ”

“ It is easy for the adverse critic to assert that in this play we find reference to civil war, to suicide, to judicial execution, and to quarrels about burial, but we find no reference to homicide. We venture to suggest that fratricide in civil war, judicial executions of which the justice is called in question, and suicide, are very closely related to homicide by the similarity, if not the community, of their nature. ”

“ Intentional killing of another in circumstances implying neither murder on the one hand, nor justifiable homicide on the other—e.g. if a person exceed moderation in retaliation for an injury, or kill another when the danger to which he was exposed is passed. ”

“ The homicide has not the characteristic of “malice prepense” which would raise the death to murder, nor the completely accidental nature which would reduce it to homicide by misadventure. It was practically identical, therefore, with manslaughter. ”

“ By these laws, when a man was convicted of intentional homicide, he was handed over to the family of the murdered person, to be slain by them in turn.1 It still was vengeance, and not justice, that was to be satisfied. ”

“ Manslaughter or Culpable Homicide (Scotland) is the unlawful killing of a human being without malice—as homicide after great provocation; signalman who allows a train to pass, and so collide with another in front. ”

“ One man killed another who was fighting with a friend of the first, a janitor was killed in a "continuous row" which had been going on for a long time, and one homicide was committed for "nothing in particular." ”

“ College professors, delicate ladies, children not yet in their teens, have committed homicide, why not this handsome gentleman in the wool business? Or if you won't have murder—and I agree that blood is rather tiresome, it has been overdone so much—bring a woman into the case. ”

“ Amongst these classes homicide is a hundredfold rarer than amongst those—and they amount, perhaps, in all, to hardly one in a thousand,—who pay homage to the principle: and even blows are of no very frequent occurrence. ”

“ The criminal! Statistics unusually trustworthy show that if the carnage yearly produced by him could be brought together at one time and place it would excel the horrors of many a well-contested field of battle. In nine great countries of the world, including our own favored land, in one year, 10,380 cases of homicide were recorded, and in the six years extending from 1884 to 1889, in the United States alone, 14, 770 murders came under cognizance of the law. ”

“ Apart from the elements of fear and honour, and in so far as the mere act of killing is concerned, there is but a difference of degree between the homicide who has stabbed a man in anger, and the soldier who has killed one enemy, or ten, in battle. In most cases the homicide is pursued by a fear of consequences to which the soldier is not subject. ”

“ Now, our last quotation from Plato suggests that a man who came to be suspected of homicide some time after the crime was committed, and who was never formally prosecuted and convicted, could, nevertheless, be put to death! ”

“ 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. ”

“ A weapon may give evidence more often here than when suicide is in question, for a weapon may be used to inflict contused wounds which may resemble those received in a fall. The evidence furnished by a weapon or blood, hair, etc., on the weapon, etc., is strongly in favor of murder. (6) The evidence from a struggle is also more important because it is more often found. A struggle may occur in homicide, and only in homicide, as a rule, so that signs of a struggle are strong evidence of murder and against the idea of accident. ”

“ HOMICIDE.—Homicide is the killing of a human being, and is divided into excusable, felonious, and justifiable homicide. The distinction between excusable and justifiable homicide is very slight and perhaps of little utility. ”

“ Suffice it to say that after a careful review of the record, we have reached the conclusion that when the evidence on the part of the state is viewed in the most favorable light to the state, the highest degree of homicide which it can support is voluntary manslaughter. ”

“ In the latter case we have homicide, which is defined as follows: “an act or omission of a human being that is the efficacious cause (see 1763) of the death of a human being.” A parent who denies his child the food, remedies or climate which it needs and which he can afford commits homicide by omission; a physician who practises abortion commits homicide by act. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Casual homicide which was not intended in itself, but which was the consequence of doing some dangerous action, as furious driving in a frequented street, is imputable to the agent if he adverted to the probable danger of killing someone. ”

“ So that whether the punishment for murder be an excruciating death, as in ancient Rome, or a mere fine, as in ancient England, the motives for escape are always the same, the means to effect it are always the same, and the belief in his power to effect it is correspondingly powerful in every criminal guilty of homicide. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Murder is the charge preferred against the prisoner, which, at common law, is defined to be, when a person of sound memory and discretion unlawfully killeth any reasonable creature in being, and in the peace of the State, with malice aforethought, either express or implied. Modern statutes defining murder in many cases affix degrees to the offence, according to the nature and aggravation of the circumstances under which the act of homicide is committed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In case of a trial for murder it may be alleged by the defence that the wound was caused by accident or that it was due to suicide from a fall, [548] falls being a common class of accidental wounds. So we have to judge between accident on the one hand and homicide and suicide on the other hand. The question arises especially in cases where the injury causing death is one commonly due to accident. ”

“ We hear nothing of any distinction between premeditated murder and unintentional or even justifiable homicide;142 and it seems probable that at that time, when no regular inquiry was made into the nature of the individual case, the relatives of the murdered man took no account of the different varieties of killing. ”

“ Homicide.—In Scotch law homicide is held to be committed only where a distinctly self-existent human life has been destroyed. Destruction of an unborn child, however short a time before delivery, may be criminal, but is not homicidal. ”

“ HOMICIDE, n. The slaying of one human being by another. There are four kinds of homocide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the person slain whether he fell by one kind or another -- the classification is for advantage of the lawyers. ”