Killian v. State

1. The court charged the jury that “Assault with intent to murder may be defined as an assault without justification and without any circumstances of mitigation, made by one person upon another, with a weapon in its nature likely to produce death, with the specific intent at the time unlawfully to take away the life of the person assaulted.” Held: This instruction is not subject to the exception that it excludes the necessary ingredient of malice; nor is it error because the court failed to define legal malice. Malice, in its application to the law of homicide, means the intent to take life…