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EDWARD D. WORRELL. 155

rather an evidence of such deliberate malice. To allow to
passion any extenuating quality, the proof must disclose the
existence of an adequate exciting cause, The clemency of the
law is not extended in favor of a class of mankind, whose
minds and hearts, from habit and indulgence, prove the
darker passions are apt to become too easily and dangerously
excited upon alight provocation, and to resent slight affronta
with disproportionate violence. The provocation which ex-
tenuates an act of homicide in consequence of the passion it
excites must be of & character aud degree which in a heart
not naturally wicked and depraved would be reasonably cal-
enlated to produce the result. Mere words, however. re-
preachful and insulting, are not a sufficient provocation to
lessen the grade of crime of an act of homicide.

Any act of killing a human being, therefore, which from
the facts and circumstances disclosed and affirmatively estab-
lished by evidence in the cause, we cannot reasonably and
fairly refer to the controlling impulses of sudden and vio-
lent passion, upon adequate provocation, and where in addi-
tion it is made to appear by the evidence that the killing was
the result of design and intention of the person inflicting the
mortal wound, is a wilful, deliberate and premeditated killing
in the meaning of the statute, and is murder in the first de-
gree.

On the other hand, unless the circumstances indicating de-
liberate malice and premeditation are affirmatively proved
by the evidence in the cause, to have existed in the partic-
ular case we are examining, then the law presumes the killing
to be murder in the second degree only. Murder in the first
degree is distinguishable from murder in the second degree
in this, and although each requires the same characteristic
quality of deliberate malice, and although there is supposed.
the absence of proof of sudden and violent passion alike in
each degree, yet in murder in the first degree the law requires
that the facts and circumstances indicating deliberate malice
and premeditation shall be shown and established as affirma-
tive facts, deducible from evidence in the cause alone, and to
be found by the jury. Whereas, in murder in the second de-

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