State v. Brown

Citations

• 25 Del. 405
• 2 Boyce 405
• 80 A. 146
• 1911 Del. LEXIS 55

Syllabus

<p>1. Criminal Law — Confessions—Voluntary Character — Arrest.</p> <p>Confessions obtained at a coroner’s inquest under oath, while accused were in the custody of the sheriff, having been taken from the jail handcuffed to the scene of the murder, where the inquest was held, were involuntary and inadmissible.</p> <p>2. Criminal Law — Confessions—Voluntary Character — Preliminary Proof.</p> <p>Where a detective was offered to prove a confession obtained from accused, they were entitled to cross examine him to ascertain whether any inducement had been held out, and to show by another witness that the confession was in fact obtained by inducement, before the detective would be permitted to disclose the same.</p> <p>3. Criminal Law — Evidence—Confessions—Promise.</p> <p>A statement by witness to the prisoner, at the time of an alleged confession, that the prisoner should tell the truth, that it would be better for him, was not such an inducement as would require the exclusion of the confession as involuntary.</p> <p>4. Homicide — Murder—“Malice”.</p> <p>“Malice,” as an element of murder, is a condition of the mind or heart. It is not restricted to spite or malevolence towards the particular person slain, but includes general malignity and reckless disregard of human life, which proceed from a heart void of a just sense of social duty and fatally bent on mischief, so that, wherever the fatal act is done deliberately or without adequate cause, the law presumes that it was done with malice, and the burden is on the prisoner to show that the act was not malicious.</p> <p>5. Homicide — Principals and Accessories — Statutes.</p> <p>Rev. Code 1852, amended to 1893, p. 975, c. 133, § 1, provides that every person who shall abet, procure, command, or counsel any other person or persons to commit any crime or misdemeanor, shall be deemed an accomplice, and equally criminal as the principal offender, and shall be punished in the same manner. Held that, where either of several alleg