Trial of Judge Wilkinson, Dr. Wilkinson, and Mr. Murdaugh on indictments for the murder of John Rothwell and Alexander H. Meeks : in an affray which occurred at the Galt House, Louisville, Ky., on the 15th of December, 1838 / reported by T. Egerton Browne.

  • Wilkinson, Edward C.
Date:
1839
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Trial of Judge Wilkinson, Dr. Wilkinson, and Mr. Murdaugh on indictments for the murder of John Rothwell and Alexander H. Meeks : in an affray which occurred at the Galt House, Louisville, Ky., on the 15th of December, 1838 / reported by T. Egerton Browne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    by lying in wait, &.c.;-' this is express malice; but u is not the only kind of malice. For the law meaneth by the term malice that the fact hath been attended with such circumstances as are the ordi- nary symptoms of a wicked, depraved and malignant spirit, and which carry in them plain indications of a heart regardless of social duty and fatally bent upon mischief.—See Foster, page 256, and Blackstone, page 199. The constitution makes you, gentlemen of the jury, the arbiters of life and death. You are to make a solemn enquiry into the causes which deprive by violence your country of the life and services of one or more of its citizens. In all cases of death by violence the law implies that it is done by malice until the contrary is proved Such is the shield thrown by the law round human life that it raises a presumption of malice in the consummation of violence. Should I succeed in satisfying you that a killing has been done where malice is proved by the evidence, of that amount known to the law, it is murder; and unless you can find in the circumstances proved to you that there are extenuating circumstances, you cannot compro- mise the law by doing less than the duty which it demands of you. Sir Michael Foster, page 255, lays down the rule: That in every charge of mur- der, the fact of killing being first proved, all the cir- cumstances of accident, necessity, or infirmity, arc to be satisfactorily proved by the prisoner; unless they arise out of the evidence produced against him, for the law presumeth the fact to have been foun- ded in malice, until the contrary appears. The law does not require in proof of malice that there should have been a previous grudge, for it may arise at the moment of inflicting the deadly violence, or be inflicted upon persons previous to the act, un- known to the slayer. On this occasion it is not ne- cessary to prove that Judge Wilkinson or Mr. Mur- daugh had ever known their unfortunate victims; if their act springs from hearts regardless of social duty and fatally bent upon mischief—and this is manifested in different ways, from the manner of the assault, the weapon used, and the probability that death would result from the blow. For in all cases of homicide upon provocation, if it may be reasonably collected from the weapon used, or from any other circumstances, that the party intended to kill, or to do some great bodily harm, such homicide is murder. And right it should be. For he who carries a weapon calculated to take life, shows that he broods over blood, and that he thinks with levity of taking the life of a fellow being. JNature itself revolts at the idea of death, and a thrill of horror runs through every nerve at the thought of imbruing our hand in the life's blood of a fellow being; and he, therefore, who, with the impending glittering blade over an unarmed man, can strike with a delib- erate intent to kill, is a monster—dead to the social ties, dead to the sympathies of our nature, and longrr worthy of human regard or to the protection of human laws. You see then, gentlemen, that it is not essential to the crime of murder that there should have been any previous grudge or quarrel, or even a previous acquaintance. But if you believe that the killing was done with a heart fatally bent upon mischief and fraught with malice, and you must judge of this from the manner of the blow, the nature of the weapon and all the other circum- stances of the case—then is it murder—and you must so find. Let your feelings be how they may—yea, even though you wrote your verdict in tears. As I h^vesaid before, if you believe these gentle- men have been guilty of this crime,you are to consider whether any extenuating circumstances are in proof, and in mercy you arc bound to regard those exten- uating circumstances; but if you believe those cir- cumstances are not of that weight which the law says is necessary to justify the taking of human life, you are not to be swayed from your duty by your feelings. Gentlemen, I am sorry to say that there has been thrown into this case a quantity of trash and chaff not recognized by the laws of evidence; and this has been done, no doubt, with a view of preventing you from readily discovering in this trashy chaff, the grains of wheat, the facts upon which your decision must be made. I did not interrupt this course, be- cause the counsel for the defence had the right to in- troduce their own testimony in the method which suited them, and I could not tell until the testimony for the accused was closed whether those declarations and opinions of others would be connected with other facts and circumstances so as to make them relevant and proper. Many of the witnesses have detailed to you what they thought—what others said—if not what others thought. This surely is not evidence; yet I found that I could not arrest such an improper course. All I can now do is to tell you that you have no right to give the least weight to that kind of evidence; for you are sworn to de- cide this cause not by the vague conjectures and opinions of others, nor even by your own, but by the lights of truth and sober reason. The counsel on the opposite side will endeavor to show you that there was a mob, or a concert of a mob, got up by Redding and his friends to assault these gentlemen at the Gait House. You will have the opinions of counsel on this point; but you must keep in mind that opinions are not evidence. As- certain the facts from the proof, and consult your own consciences to make up your judgment. Re- collect that you are here to try the law and the facts; and that you are not to mingle up with them that which is not legitimate testimony. I can compare the defence in this case to nothing but a boiling cauldron, into which a vast quantity of angry