State v. Petty

The defendant was found guilty of the crime of murder in the second degree, in the killing of her six-year-old daughter the night of July 26, 1956. On appeal, she assigns error to the court’s refusing of a proposed instruction defining the crime of manslaughter and to its denial of her motion for a new trial. The motion was grounded on her contention that the requested instruction was erroneously refused.

We have uniformly held that every homicide, when proved beyond a reasonable doubt or admitted, is presumed to be murder in the second degree; and the burden is upon the accused to reduce it…