Homicide Law In Comparative Perspective

Author : H. V. Redfield
Publisher : CreateSpace
ISBN 13 : 9781515326038
Total Pages : 208 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (26 download)

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Download or read book Homicide, North and South written by H. V. Redfield and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2015-08-01 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A little book published by the late Mr. Redfield, a very painstaking and trustworthy writer, in 1880, entitled "Homicide North and South," tells a really awful story on this point, and one, too, which has never to my knowledge been denied or successfully disputed. He collected his statistics very carefully, taking them from official records in the States in which such records are kept, and as to the others, from the local newspapers. He reached the astounding conclusion that there had been 40,000 homicides in the Southern States since the war. In the year 1878 there were, he says, in the States of South Carolina, Texas, and Kentucky 734 homicides. He selected these States for examination and comparison, because in them the sources of information on this matter were unusually good. In Texas there were in that year more homicides than in the ten States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Minnesota, with an aggregate population of 17,000,000 nearly. In Kentucky, with a population of 1,500,000, there were in that year more homicides than in the eight Northern States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota, with an aggregate population of nearly 10,000,000. In South Carolina, with a population of 800,000, there were in the same year more, homicides than in the eight Northern States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Michigan, and Minnesota, with an aggregate population of 6,000,000. Of course, a large proportion of these occurred in brawls among drunken men in bar rooms and the like, but a very large proportion of them also followed on business, or social or family quarrels such as the most sober or discreet man might, in spite of himself, be involved in. Some of them give rise to vendettas, in which whole families arc gradually slaughtered. A large number of the victims are relatives, brothers, brothers-in-law, occasionally even fathers or sons of the murderers. In Kentucky, with a population of a million and a half, there were in 1878, 219 homicides; in Yorkshire, with a population of 2,500,000, largely manufacturing, the average annual number of homicides is thirty-three. This comparison will, perhaps, bring the state of things in the South more clearly before the mind of the English reader, than illustrations drawn from the Northern States in this country. One reason why homicide continues so prevalent in the South in spite of the absence of large cities, is undoubtedly the refusal of Southern juries from the earliest time to treat killing in fight as criminal. From this has arisen a curious reversal of the rule of the common law, which made malice prepense necessary to constitute murder. In the South, the prisoner charged with murder, instead of trying to show that there was no malice in the killing, does all he can to show that there was-that is, that the killing was the result of a previous quarrel. As a natural consequence of this, there has grown up in the South a feeling that killing a man after giving him notice that you would "shoot him on sight" is always justifiable. If you came on him unawares and shot him down, even if he were unarmed, the notice would generally hold you harmless in the eyes of a Southern jury, who would treat his death as a result of his own want of vigilance. Whole families have been exterminated in this way in the course of a feud without any interference from the law, and there is hardly a village or town which does not contain a surviving actor in many bloody frays. -The Contemporary Review, Volume 44 [1883]