Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 10.djvu/174

 162 FISDEBAIi BEFOBTEB. �sode in the trial pending the last argument. The prisoner bas taken repeated occasiona to proclaim that public opinion, as evidenced by the press and by his correspondance, ia in his favor. As you well know, these declarations could not have beea prevented except by resjrting to the proeess of gagging him. Any suggestion that you could be influenced by this lawless babble of the prisoner, would have seemed to me simply absurd, and I should have felt that I had almost insulted your intelligence if I had warned you not to regard it. The connsel for the proseoution have been rebuked for allowing these declarations to go to you without contradiction, and in the course of thi final argument they felt it necessary to interpose a contradiction to these declarations of the prisoner, and the latter's counsel excepted to the form in which the contradiction was made. For the sole pur- pos3 of purging this record of any apparently objectionable matter, I would simply say, here, that nothing that bas been said in refer- ence to public sentiment or newspaper opinion, on either side, is to be regarded by yoa, although I really feel that such an admonition froin me is totally unnecessary, �This indictment charges the defendant with having murdered James A. Garfield. �It becomes my duty, in the first place, to explain to you the nature of the crime charged. �With us, murder is committed where a person of sound memory and discretion unlawfully kills a reasonable creature in being, and in the peace of the United States, with malice aforethought. �It must of course be proved, first, that the death was caused by the act of the aecused. �It must be further shown that it was caused with malice afore- thought; but this doesnot mean that the government must prove any special ill-will, hatred, or grudge, on the part of the prisoner, towards the deceased. Whenever a homicide is shown to have been commit- ted without lawful authority and with deliberate intent, it is suffi- ciently proved to have been done with malice aforethought. And this evidence is not answered and malice is not disproved, by show- ing that the aecused had no personal ill-will against the deceased, but killed him from some other motive, as for purpose of robbery, or by mistaking him for another, or, as allegod in this case, to produce a public benefit. �If it could be shown that the killing occurred in the beat of passion and on sudden quarrel, and under provocation from the deceased, then it would appear that there was no premeditated intent, and con- ��� �