Parricide

“ English law has never made any legal distinction between killing a parent or other relative and simple murder, and the Netherlands and Germany follow in the same direction. French law has been exceptionally severe in its treatment of parricide. Before the Revolution, the parricide if a male, had to make a recantation of his crime, and then suffered the loss of his right hand; his body was afterwards burned and the ashes scattered to the winds. If the parricide was a female she was burned or hanged. ”

“ No one would have supposed from her face or from her conversation that she was so wicked as she must have been, judging by her public avowal of the parricide. It is surprising, therefore—and one must bow down before the judgment of God when He leaves mankind to himself—that a mind evidently of some grandeur, professing fearlessness in the most untoward and unexpected events, an immovable firmness and a resolution to await and to endure death if so it must be, should yet be so criminal as she was proved to be by the parricide to which she confessed before her judges. ”

“ We are a Christian family, members of an honourable community, trained each and all in religious principles, you, by the best, the sweetest of mothers—does it move you to think that one of you could contemplate parricide and even attempt it? ”

“ Gerlach, Dietsch, Kritzius, and all the recent editors, agree to interpret manu by gaming.
[79] Assassins—Parricidae. "Not only he who had killed his father was called a parricide, but he who had killed any man; as is evident from a law of Numa Pompilius: If any one unlawfully and knowingly bring a free man to death, let him be a parricide." ”

“ But in regard to child murder, as it does not matter whether it is committed for a sacred object, or merely at one’s own self-impulse—although there is a great difference, as we have said, between parricide and homicide—I shall turn to the people generally. How many, think you, of those crowding around and gaping for Christian blood,—how many even of your rulers, notable for their justice to you and for their severe measures against us, may I charge in their own consciences with the sin of putting their offspring to death? ”

“ Certainly it is a heinous crime for a father to kill his son, but it would be a still more grievous sin to spare the life of a parricide, lest he went on to exterminate his family, and lay their name in the dirt, to be execrated of all men. ”

“ He who shall kill his father, mother, or child, whether legitimate or illegitimate, or any other of his ascendants or descendants or his spouse, shall be punished as a parricide, with the penalty of cadena perpetua to death. ”

“ We have outlived the days of superstition, and we do not, we dare not, believe what has been handed down to us on the subject of this self-imputed parricide—but we are at liberty, as veracious chroniclers of tradition, to narrate what were at one time supposed to be the ways of a mysterious Providence, in punishing the unfilial conduct of a son who, after experiencing the unlimited kindness of a parent, took into his hand arms, which, by another, though unknown hand, were used against that parent's life. ”

“ If a double parricide stain the annals of other dynasties, nature and terror stop with the second, lest, by a long enchainment of horrors, and a series of parricides, our belief in humanity, and in the most sacred feelings, should expire. ”

“ Parricide, a most horrible crime, is in some departments treated with leniency, while in others a common murder, so to speak, is punished with death. [There are in penal servitude twenty-three parricides who have been allowed the benefit of extenuating circumstances.] And what would happen if here in Paris, in our home district, an innocent man should be executed!”
“He is an escaped convict,” said Monsieur Camusot, diffidently. ”

“ The old horrors [8] of parricide and incest are unfolded in action calculated to express the image of the truth, so that, as the ages pass by, any crime that was formerly committed may not be forgotten. Each generation is reminded by what it hears, that whatever has once been done may be done again. ”

“ If he or she should have children by another marriage, half of said property shall belong to the heirs of the person killed, and half to the children of the parricide, provided they were not implicated in the crime of the father or mother ”

“ Can any person speak ill of the parent of life, and dare to pollute himself thus with parricide, and be so impiously ungrateful as to accuse her whom he ought to reverence, even were he less able to appreciate the advantages which he might derive from her? ”

“ King Theodoric to Symmachus, Patrician.
Romulus the parricide.
'Parricide is the most terrible and unnatural of crimes. Even the cubs of wild beasts follow their sires; the offshoot of the vine serves the parent stem: shall man war against him who gave him being? It is for our little ones that we lay up wealth. Shall we not earn the love of those for whom we would willingly incur death itself? ”

“ Thou wouldst kill thy father after thy brethren, lest thy lies raised against them might be detected; and lest thou shouldst suffer what punishment thou hadst deserved, thou hadst a mind to exact that punishment of thy unhappy father, and didst devise such a sort of uncommon parricide as the world never yet saw. ”

“ Since blood it is that shakes us with such storm. It is of course possible to maintain that a penalty which permitted the option of death or exile was the punishment of parricide in the early stages of the ‘pollution system,’ though such an option was not permitted for kin-slaying in Attic law. ”

“ And I see that you at one time expose your begotten children to wild beasts and to birds; at another, that you crush them when strangled with a miserable kind of death. There are some women who, by drinking medical preparations, [1] extinguish the source of the future man in their very bowels, and thus commit a parricide before they bring forth. ”

“ From the time that she was discovered to have taken poison till she breathed her last she lay in the arms of the poor man, who besought her to live, that her only son might atone for his crime, and not be a parricide. ”

“ The wounding of parents, and parricide, exceeding by so large a ratio all other acts of violence against the person, I believe can be explained in no other way. Admitting, as I have already done, that the great opportunity afforded of making attempts upon the persons of parents has some value as a factor, yet we must bear in mind that, from the nature of their domestic life, women have opportunities equally as great of inflicting injury upon others. ”

“ Family disputes, quarrels between brothers and sisters are frequent enough; parricide, fratricide and infanticide are not rare. In addition to this, beyond the narrow circle of the family, disputes, hatred between individuals, deception, robbery and many worse things are always the order of the day. ”

“ All confess their wicked purpose, and by virtue of a law made and provided for such case, they are to be disinherited. But should the father, who has already made a partition of his estate in their favor, plead their cause, he may proceed thus: "Children are accused of parricide, whose father is still alive, and they are sued in consequence of a law that is not properly applicable to their case. ”

“ These are to the wicked their incessant and domestic furies which night and day exact from wicked sons punishment for the crimes committed against their parents. 68This enormity of the crime is the cause why, unless a parricide is proved in a manner almost visible, it is not credible, unless a man's youth has been base, unless his life has been stained with every sort of wickedness, unless his extravagance has been prodigal and accompanied with shame and disgrace, unless his audacity has been violent, unless his rashness has been such as to be not far removed from insanity. ”

“ Another may, in the dark, shoot his father, taking him to be an assassin, and so commit what is materially an act of parricide, though formally it is only an act of self-defense or more or less culpable rashness. ”

“ For in the case of parricide, a will does not give rise to any DIFFERENT relations, but is only the cause from which the action is derived; and consequently produces the same relations, that in the oak or elm arise from some other principles. It is a will or choice, that determines a man to kill his parent ”

“ God knows that I am innocent of the awful sin you lay at my door. I will trust to Him to save me from the malice of my persecutors."
It was in vain that the man by every argument and [Pg 291] threat in his power sought to shake the steady courage of the girl, and to bend her to his will. In vain he painted for her the horrors of the fiery death of the parricide ”

“ While the sons, far from objecting to an act of parricide, will intimate to their aged parents, if they delay the request, that they have lived long enough, and that it will be well for them to enjoy the rest of the grave. ”

“ The offences of the inferior relations against the superior, are visited with a tenfold heavier punishment, while those of the latter against the former, are scarcely noticed. A parricide is to suffer the most lingering and shameful death that can be devised; and should the criminal even die in prison, the body is to be subjected to the same process, as if still alive; but if a parent put to death his own offspring, the offence is comparatively trivial. ”

“ It is obvious that such joy is morally wrong, for the act of parricide was at any rate materially wrong even when committed while drunk, and joy on account of what was, and is, wrong is unlawful; nor does succession to the father's wealth, a good of a lower order than human life, especially a father's life, furnish a just cause for such unfilial rejoicing. ”

“ Art. 403. The crime of murder is committed by any person who, not falling within the terms of the next preceding article [relating to parricide] , shall kill another under any of the following circumstances:
1. With alevosia. ”

“ No one, however, would have supposed that he “was capable of becoming a parricide, as was too clearly proved on the fatal night in question.” After these preliminary reflections comes a narration of the facts much in the words in which I have given them. This is followed by a statement of the arguments for the prosecution and for the defence, consisting of a number of verbose paragraphs, each beginning, “considering that,” &c. The case of the prosecution was clear enough. The medical evidence proved that the father died of the wounds received on the above-named night. ”

“ A new species of sin is added to that of injustice when other virtues are offended against. Thus, the virtue of piety is violated when the victim is a person to whom the slayer owed special respect and devotedness, as in parricide, regicide, fratricide, uxoricide; the virtue of religion is offended when murder is committed in a church. ”

“ They see that no man's life is safe before a court that has been set up to guard the welfare of citizens, and every voice is raised in a demand of vengeance.
In this strange incident we have to deal with religion, suicide, and parricide. The question was, Whether a father and mother had strangled their son to please God, a brother had strangled his brother, and a friend had strangled his friend; or whether the judges had incurred the reproach of breaking on the wheel an innocent father, or of sparing a guilty mother, brother, and friend. ”

“ Again, let us group all those crimes against persons which involve the taking of human life, and observe the extent to which the sexes are engaged. For all crimes against persons, Quetelet places the ratio at sixteen to one hundred; but in the class of crimes I have selected, involving infanticide, poisoning, parricide, assassination, and murder, we find this ratio nearly doubled, being thirty to one hundred. It is evident that woman's tendency to crime must be measured by some other standard than innate morality. ”

“ Wherefore do not suppose that they were wise men, but rather evil spirits, who could cover honourable actions with wicked stories, in order that they who wish to imitate their betters may emulate these deeds of so-called gods, which yesterday in my discourse I spoke so freely of,—namely, their parricides, their murders of their children, their incests of all kinds, their shameless adulteries and countless impurities. ”

“ Keep my precepts, and do them. I am the Lord that sanctify you.
20:9. He that curseth his father, or mother, dying let him die. He hath cursed his father, and mother: let his blood be upon him.
20:10. If any man commit adultery with the wife of another, and defile his neighbour’s wife: let them be put to death, both the adulterer and the adulteress.
20:11. If a man lie with his stepmother, and discover the nakedness of his father, let them both be put to death: their blood be upon them.
20:12. If any man lie with his daughter in law: let both die, because they have done a heinous crime. ”

“ You murdered your own child, not, indeed, with your own hands,—you drove another to do the desperate deed, and that other, your wife, who came to you with a loving and trusting heart, to save and to be saved; and you, to gratify your selfish passion, drove her to the commission 62of the crime of ante-natal child-murder,—a crime that must forever weigh upon her soul like a mountain of guilt and shame; a deed, after the doing of which, no true woman can ever, in this life, stand proud and stainless, in conscious innocence and dignity, before the tribunal of her womanhood. ”