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Browsing: Legal Papers of John Adams, Volume 3
Docno: ADMS-05-03-02-0001-0003-0005
Date: 1770-10-25
Paine's Minutes of Samuel Quincy's Argument for The Crown1
25 October 1770
Mr. Quincy.
3 Inst. 472
4 Black 195. Definition of Murder3
1 Haw. p. 80. §18. What killing of Malice prepense.4
1 H.H. 4515
{ 62 } F. 261 §36
3 Inst. 627
Key. 127. “He [that] doth a cruel act voluntarily doth it of Malice prepense.”8
2. 3 Coke, Institutes *47, discusses murder, and is paraphrased in the footnote next following.
3. 4 Blackstone, Commentaries *195: “Murder is . . . 'when a person, of sound memory and discretion, unlawfully
killeth any reasonable creature in being and under the king's peace, with malice aforethought,
either express or implied.”
4. 1 Hawkins, Pleas of the Crown 80, c. 31, §18:
“[A]ny formed Design of doing Mischief may be called Malice; and therefore . . . not
such killing only as proceeds from premeditated Hatred or Revenge against the Person
killed, but also in many other Cases, such as is accompanied with those Circumstances
that shew the Heart to be perversly wicked, is adjudged to be of Malice prepense,
and consequently Murder.”
5. 1 Hale, Pleas of the Crown 451, discusses malice.
6. Foster, Crown Cases 261, §3, distinguishes murder, manslaughter, and accidental death.
7. 3 Coke, Institutes *62: “Malice prepensed. That is, voluntary and of set purpose, though it be done upon a sudden occasion:
for if it be voluntary, the law implieth malice.”
Cite web page as: Founding Families: Digital Editions of the Papers of the Winthrops and the Adamses, ed.C. James Taylor. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 2016.
http://www.masshist.org/apde2/
http://www.masshist.org/apde2/