matt@brl-tgr.ARPA (Matthew Rosenblatt ) (10/17/85)
In article 2101, PAUL W. KARBER gives a good example of why a difference in legal rights does not mean the difference between a "full legal human being" and something less. Mr. Karber's dictionary gives a correct definition of murder: > Anyway, my dictionary defines murder as killing (a human being) > unlawfully and with premeditated malice. [P. W. KARBER] This agrees with the definition in Black's Law Dictionary, taken from a case called State v. Hunt: "The unlawful killing of a human being by another human being with malice aforethought." In a previous article, I tried to give the definition from memory, including stuff about "without justification or excuse," but that business is included in the word "unlawful." Mr. Karber then goes on to say: > (malice is defined > as the desire to see another suffer). I hate to disagree publicly with so able a spokesman for my side, the pro-life side, in the abortion debate. But "malice" in the legal term "malice aforethought" has a technical meaning, defined by the case law, which has little if anything to do with its everyday meaning as the desire to see another suffer. (It also has little to do with the technical legal meaning of "malice" in a libel case under New York Times v. Sullivan.) Obviously, I don't have available all the statutory definitions, but in one criminal law textbook, the statutes pertaining to different kinds of homicide, as defined in New York State as of 1967, are set forth -- manslaughter, murder, etc. In the initial paragraph, "homicide" is defined as the killing of a human being under circumstances that fit one of the definitions in the sections that follow. There are ellipses (three dots: . . . ) in this definition of homicide, and a footnote says that the editors of the textbook have omitted those parts of the text referring to abortion. To me, this indicates that, at least in 1967 New York State, abortion was considered a form of homicide. If any of you readers is an attorney or law student with access to a good law library, please try to reconstruct this 1967 statute for us, and post the complete wording (including references to abortion) in the net. Failing that, I shall post a request in net.legal (to which I do not subscribe) for the same information. Thank you. And thank you, Mr. Karber, for your continuing support of the pro-life position! -- Matt Rosenblatt