People v. Gibson
Before: Baldwin
Synopsis
On trial for murder, it is error for the Court to instruct the jury that from the mere fact of killing, the law presumes the slayer guilty of murder in the first degree, unless this presumption is rebutted by the evidence.
When the homicide is proved to have been committed by the accused, he must show justification, excuse, or circumstances of mitigation, and unless he does so the law infers he is guilty of murder; but whether murder in the first or second degree must be left to the jury to determine from the circumstances , before them characterizing the offense.
In capital cases, Judges ought to confine their instructions to the jury to a few plain- principles of law, when counsel do not ask for charges.
Baldwin, J. delivered the opinion of the Court Cope, J. concurring.
The Court instructed the jury in this case that, from the mere-. [284]fact of killing, the law presumed the slayer was guilty of murder in the first degree, unless this presumption was rebutted. We do not see how this charge can be supported. The statute (Wood's Digest, 331, sec. 21) is in these words: “ Malice shall be implied when no considerable provocation appears, or when all the circumstances of the killing show an abandoned and malignant heart. All murder which shall be perpetrated by means of poison, or lying in wait, torture, or by any other- kind of willful, deliberate, and premeditated killing, or which shall be committed in the perpetration or attempt to perpetrate any arson, rape, robbery, or burglary, shall be deemed murder of the first degree ; and all other kinds of murder shall be deemed murder of the second degree; and the jury before whom any person indicted for murder shall be tried shall, if they find such person guilty thereof, designate by their verdict whether it be murder of the first or second degree; but if such person shall be convicted on confession in open Court, the Court shall proceed, by examination of witnesses, to determine the degree of the crime, and give sentence accordingly. Every person convicted of murder of the first degree shall suffer death; and every person convicted of murder of the second degree shall suffer imprisonment in the State prison for a term of not less than ten years, and which may extend to life.”
Undoubtedly, when a homicide is proved to have been committed by the accused, it rests upon him to show justification, excuse, or circumstances of mitigation; and this not being shown, the legal inference is that he has committed the crime of murder. This crime consists in the perpetration of the unlawful act, and the malicious intent. But these characteristics as well apply to murder in the second as murder in the first degree. The crime of murder is divided into these two classes, and to the first class is assigned the severest penalty, as being committed under circumstances of the greater aggravation. Willful, deliberate, premeditated murder, or that committed in the prosecution of or an attempt to perpetrate the felonies described in the statute, constitutes the crime in the first degree. But we are at a loss to discover the principle or reason which would enable a Court, from the mere fact that homicide has ensued, and that it is unexplained, to declare, as matter of [285]
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