Reading Time: 2 minutes [321 words]

EDWARD D. WORRELL. 153

you would experience no difficulty in finding a suitable ob-
ject for the exercise of your sympathy,

Gentlemen, I have done; may the Almighty so direct your
minds that in the verdict you shall render, no cause shall
be found for future regret.

THE CHARGE TO THE JURY.

Jupae Stonz, The jury are instructed by the Court that
if they find that the prisoner killed Mr. Gordon as charged,
then their next duty will be to inquire and determine, first,
whether such killing be murder, and if murder, whether in
the first or second degree; or, second, whether it be not exeusa-
ble in consequence of the mental insanity of the prisoner, in
8 degree which exempts him from any accountability. To es-
tabliah the guilt of murder in the first degree, the law requires
evidence of a character which, of itself, and by fair and nat-
ural inference, proves the Killing to have been a wilful, de
liberate and premeditated act, as contradistinguished from
one done in the heat of passion and without intention. In
other words, that at and before the time of inflicting the mor-
tal wound the prisoner intended to kill Mr. Gordon, and that
uch killing was the deliberate and premeditated act of a mind
capable at the moment of reasoning and deliberating on the
reasons and motives influencing to its commission, when free
from the perverting influencea of insane delusions, or the
controlling impulses of sudden and violent passion.

In murder in the firat degree the facts and circumstances
which indicate deliberation, malice and premeditation are
required to be proved affirmatively by evidence in the cause,
Such evidence as by fair and natural inference alone and
without a resort to presumptions of law or artificial rules of
legal reasoning, establish the facta required to be proved;
aud although deliberation, malice and premeditation may be,
and often is, a conclusion of law from a given state of facts,
yet, until the facts from which the law deduces the existence
of such deliberate malice are first established by competent
affirmative evidence, no inference can be drawn from the fact

Related Posts