ON THE LAW OF HOMICIDE IN THE UNITED STATES: TO WHICH IS APPENDED A SERIES OF LEADING CASES. BY FRANCIS WHARTON, LL. D., AUTHOR OF "A TREATISE ON THE CRIMINAL LAW OF THE UNITED STATES,' GENCE," A TREATISE ON THE CONFLICT OF LAWS," "PRECEDENTS OF INDICTMENTS AND PLEAS," 66 STATE TRIALS OF THE UNITED STATES," ETC. PHILADELPHIA:' KAY AND BROTHER, 17 AND 19 SOUTH SIXTH STREET, Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1854, by KAY AND BROTHER, in the Office of the Clerk of the District Court of the United States in and for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1875, by in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: PREFACE. FOR some years after the exhaustion of the first edition of this work, I declined to revise it for republication. The topic, so far as concerns its general principles, was discussed in my Treatise on Criminal Law; and in the successive editions of that work the intermediate changes of the law in this respect are noted. The period, however, has now arrived, when, in view of the fact that the first edition of the Homicide is still frequently cited in the courts, its revision and correction are imperative. The importance of the interests at stake demands that the applicatory cases should be stated at large and critically scanned; the changes which the last few years have wrought in the juridical conception of the Law of Homicide are so fundamental, that it is proper not only that they should be correctly recapitulated but that they should be fully discussed. Of these changes the following are the chief: 1. That which treats malice and intent as inferences of fact and not as presumptions of law;1 2. That which regards insanity as a condition susceptible of many degrees, so that a man may be sane enough to be penally responsible, and yet not sane enough to form a deliberate intent; and which would therefore exact in such a case a conviction of such a 1 Infra, § 669. |
