Paine’s Minutes of Samuel Quincy’s Argument for The Crown: 25 October 1770
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
F. 261 §36
3 Inst. 627
Key. 127. “He [that] doth a cruel act voluntarily doth it of Malice prepense.”8
1. Paine Massacre Notes. See Descriptive List of Sources and Documents.
2. 3 *47, discusses murder, and is paraphrased in the footnote next following.
3. 4 *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 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. 1 451, discusses malice.
6. 261, §3, distinguishes murder, manslaughter, and accidental death.
7. 3 *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.”
8. Reg. v. Mawgridge, 119, 127, 84 1107, 1111 (Q.B. 1707). Quotation marks supplied.