Murder

Murder. By the law of England, murder is the destruction of human life, accompanied with malice expressed or implied - i.e. an intention to kill or do great bodily harm or wilfully to place human life in peril, or resulting from an attempt to commit some other felony, or occurring in the course of resistance offered to ministers or officers of justice or others rightfully engaged in carrying the law into execution. [For cases of culpable homicide not amounting to murder see Manslaughter.] Express malice is signified by one person killing another with a deliberate mind and formed design, and which formed design is evidenced by external circumstances discovering such inward intention; as by lying in wait, antecedent menaces, former grudges, and concerted schemes to do him or her some bodily harm. Implied malice is signified by one person's voluntarily killing another without any provocation; for when such deliberate acts are committed the law implies or presumes malice to have urged the party to the commission of them, although no particular enmity can be proved, as in case anyone trespassing in pursuit of game fires at a bird and, without any intention at all of doing so, hits and kills a man, that is murder, inasmuch as the act of poaching is felonious, and the felony therein couples itself to the death, and supplies the intention which was lacking. The punishment of murder by English law is death.