State v. Roberts

Citations

• 25 Del. 140
• 2 Boyce 140
• 78 A. 305
• 1910 Del. LEXIS 85

Syllabus

<p>1. Grand Jury — Motion for Leave to Show That Indictment was Found on Illegal Testimony — Constitutional Provisions.</p> <p>Const, art. 1, § 7, giving to accused the right to.be heard by himself and his counsel, and to meet the witnesses face to face, does not justify the court to grant a motion to permit accused to show that the indictment against him was found by the grand jury on illegal testimony, where the affidavit in support of the motion is based on belief, without averring any corruption on the part of the grand jury.</p> <p>2. Jury — Qualifications—Examination.</p> <p>Under the statute declaring what questions may be put to a juror on his voir dire in a capital case, a question as to whether the juror has any “objection to returning a verdict of guilty on circumstantial evidence, where the punishment is death, is properly excluded.</p> <p>3. Criminal Law — Defense—“Alibi,”</p> <p>The defense of “alibi” means that accused was not at the scene of the crime at the time of its commission, but was at that time elsewhere.</p> <p>4. Homicide — “Felonious Homicide.”</p> <p>“Felonious homicide” is either murder in the first or second degrees or manslaughter.</p> <p>5. Homicide — Elements—“Malice.”</p> <p>“Malice,” as an essential ingredient of murder in the first and second degrees, is not restricted to spite or malevolence toward the person killed, but includes that 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.</p> <p>6. Homicide — Malice—Burden of Proof.</p> <p>Where a killing is done deliberately, or without adequate cause, the law presumes that it was done with malice; and the burden is on accused to show that the act was not so done.</p> <p>7. Homicide — “Murder of the First Degree.”</p> <p>“Murder of the first degree,” is the killing with express malice aforethought, or in perpetrating or attempting to perpetrate a crime punishable with death.</p> <p>8. Ho