State v. Shirley

The sentence of death in this first-degree murder case must be reversed because of an erroneous instruction, which is:

“It is not necessary for an appreciable period of time to elapse for premeditation to exist. ...”

This was error because it obliterates the distinction between murder in the first and second degrees. The first territorial legislature of 1854 defined murder in the first degree as follows:

“Every person who shall purposely, and of deliberate and premeditated malice, or in the perpetration, or attempt to *278perpetrate, any rape, arson, robbery or burglary, or by administering poison,…