Harrison v. Commonwealth
Supreme Court of Virginia
Argued at Wytheville but decided at Staunton. Error to judgment of circuit court, of Wythe county, refusing a writ of error to judgment of county court of said county, rendered January 21st, 1884, by which judgment the plaintiff in error was, in accordance.with the verdict of the jury,- at his trial on an indictment for the murder of Craig Brown, sentenced to death by hanging.
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Argued at Wytheville but decided at Staunton. Error to judgment of circuit court, of Wythe county, refusing a writ of error to judgment of county court of said county, rendered January 21st, 1884, by which judgment the plaintiff in error was, in accordance.with the verdict of the jury,- at his trial on an indictment for the murder of Craig Brown, sentenced to death by hanging. The facts of the case as certified are as follows: The prisoner and the deceased were in the employment of Van Lew’s iron furnace, in Wythe county, the prisoner as a teamster and the deceased as a gutterer; but they…
1Opinion of the CourtLacy, J.
The statute provides that murder by poison, lying in wait, imprisonment, starving, or any wilful, deliberate and premeditated killing, is murder of the first degree; and that murder of the first degree shall be punished with death. Murder has been defined to be the wilful killing of any subject, whatsoever, through malice aforethought. Lord Coke says: “Murder is when a man of sound memory and of the age of discretion, unlawfully killeth, within any county of the realm, any reasonable creature, in rerum natura, under the king’s place, with malice aforethought either expressed by the party or…
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