Commonwealth v. Paese

Citations

• 220 Pa. 371
• 69 A. 891
• 1908 Pa. LEXIS 787

Syllabus

<p>Criminal law — Murder—Manslaughter—Provocation—Attach on friend —Province of court and jury.</p> <p>To reduce an intentional blow, stroke or wounding, resulting in death, to voluntary manslaughter, there must be sufficient cause of provocation and a state of rage or passion without time to cool, placing the prisoner beyond the control of his reason, and suddenly impelling him to the deed. If any of these be wanting, if there be provocation without passion, or passion without a sufficient cause of provocation, or there be time to cool, and reason has resumed its sway, the killing will be murder. Where the facts are undisputed or clearly established, the sufficiency of the provocation is for the court.</p> <p>On the trial of an indictment for murder the trial judge was right in refusing to affirm a point as follows: “If the jury believe that the deceased had just made an attack and committed a violent assault and battery upon A, who was much the inferior of the deceased in size and weight, and that this was done in the presence of the defendant, who was the friend and companion of A, and they also find that this attack so excited the passion of the defendant as to destroy all self-control, and that in this condition of ungovernable rage and without sufficient cooling time he shot and killed the person so attacking, the grade of the homicide is clearly but manslaughter.”</p> <p>In general, serious injury immediately inflicted or. threatened to wife or husband, child or servant, will on account of the relationship of the parties reduce the killing to manslaughter, as if the injury had been to self; but this does not apply to a case of a friend or companion.</p> <p>On the trial of an indictment for murder it is correct to charge: Voluntary manslaughter is never attended by legal malice or depravity of heart, that condition or frame of mind before spoken of, exhibiting wickedness of disposition, recklessness of consequences or cruelty. Being sometimes a willful act, as