Page:1862 Territory of Dakota Session Laws.pdf/177

160 credibility of all such witnesses shall be left to the jury, as in other cases.

. 16. All persons capable of understanding the nature of an oath (except negroes and Indians) shall be competent witnesses unless otherwise declared by law.

. 17. The solemn affirmation of witnesses shall be deemed sufficient. A false and corrupt affirmation shall subject the witness to all the penalties and punishment provided for those who commit wilful and corrupt perjury.

. 18. Murder is the unlawful killing of a human being, with malice aforethought, either expressed or implied. The unlawful killing may be perpetrated by poisoning, striking, starving, drowning, stabbing, shooting, or by any other of the various forms or means by which human nature may be overcome, and death thereby occasioned.

. 19. Express malice is that deliberate intention unlawfully to take away the life of a fellow-creature, which is manifested by external circumstances capable of proof.

. 20. Malice shall be implied when no considerable provocation appears, or when all the circumstances of the killing show an abandoned and malignant heart. The punishment of any person or persons convicted of the crime of murder shall be death.

. 21. Manslaughter is the unlawful killing of a human being, without malice, express or implied, and without any deliberation whatever. It must be voluntary, upon a sudden heat of passion, caused by a provocation apparently sufficient to make the passion irresistible or involuntary, in the commission of an unlawful act, or a lawful act, without due caution or circumspection.

. 22. In cases of voluntary manslaughter, there must be a serious and highly provoking injury inflicted upon the person killing, sufficient to excite an irresistible passion in a reasonable person, or an attempt by the person killed to commit a serious personal injury on the person killing.

. 23. The killing must be the result of that sudden, violent impulse of passion, supposed to be irresistible; for if