83 Pa. 75 | Pa. | 1876
delivered the opinion of the court, November 20th 1876.
Upon a careful examination of the evidence in this case, we find that all “ the ingredients necessary to constitute murder in the first degree were proved to exist.” The prisoner and the deceased had been upon bad terms and involved in litigation immediately before the homicide. The former, on the next morning after the lawsuit, had threatened the life of the latter. In the evening of the killing he stopped before the door of the house where the deceased was sitting at supper, and asked the latter what he was going to do about the potatoes, a subject of difficulty between them. This led to an angry altercation, the deceased using bad language and threatening to give the prisoner a good pounding. The prisoner having started up the road toward home, saying he would bring suit next day, the deceased ran back to the fireplace, picked up a poker, an.d running out of the house, called to the prisoner to come back, saying if he came he would not go away alive. The prisoner, then being some yards up the road, said, “ I will come,” and started toward the deceased, and before reaching him levelled
It is evident, therefore, that there was ample time for the prisoner to frame in his mind the deliberate purpose to shoot the deceased, and to carry this intent out, by levelling his gun and discharging it, when told to shoot. It is no doubt true that he was also irritated by the very bad language of the deceased; but this was no sufficient cause of provocation for taking life; while the turning back of the prisoner, when called to come back, his expression as he turned— “God damn your wicked heart, I have been waiting for that,” walking back toward the deceased, levelling the gun at him, and shooting at the instant the deceased told him to. shoot, all evidence a sufficient time to act deliberately, and not under a sudden gust of passion, tearing up reason by the roots, and urging him on to a rash and thoughtless deed. These facts, together with the previous state of the prisoner’s feelings toward the deceased (his half brother), clearly presented a case where the ingredients of murder in the first degree were proved to exist, and, therefore, must be submitted to the jury for their judgment. Nor can we say that there was such a strong and reasonable doubt of their existence as to require an acquittal.
But one other -assignment of error is worthy of notice. The prisoner’s first point is that “ to constitute murder in the first degree there must be a design and intention to kill at the time the homicidal act is committed, and this intention must be a fully formed
The point, however, was not intended to bring this distinction into view, but rather the frame of mind necessary to the commission of murder in the first degree; that is the deliberation and premeditation which the Act of Assembly makes essential to the crime of murder in the first degree. So far as impetuous rage and rashness followed by the immediate act which takes away life, tend to deprive the prisoner of deliberation and premeditation, and to reduce the homicide from murder in the first to. murder in the second degree, the point was pertinent; for it was for the jury judging upon the evidence to determine whether the act ivas a result of a deliberate and premeditated purpose to kill. The time may be short, yet a jury may find that the fully conscious purpose to kill existed. Yet if, on the other hand, by reason of the shortness of the time and the presence of great rage produced on the instant, and in a moment of impetuous temper, a blow is given, a jury may be convinced that it was not the result of a fully formed purpose to kill, but of a rash and hasty impulse, with scarcely a consciousness of any purpose except to do bodily harm to the object of wrath. Hence, though the absence of a legal provocation may prevent the reduction of the crime from murder to manslaughter, the want of the deliberation and premeditation required by the law may reduce the grade of the murder from the first to the second degree.
If, therefore, the learned judge intended the qualification in his answer to the first point, to apply to the point itself, it would be
Upon the whole case we discover no substantial error. The judgment of the court of Oyer and Terminer is affirmed, and it is ordered that the record be remitted for the purpiose of execution.