Opinion ID: 848794
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: malice aforethought

Text: The phrase malice aforethought has evolved over the centuries. During the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, malice aforethought meant that one possessed an intent to kill well in advance of the act itself. Id. at 10. Notably, the emphasis was on aforethought, so that the critical difference between capital and noncapital murder was the passage of time between the initial formulation of the intent to kill and the act itself. Moylan, Criminal Homicide Law (Maryland Institute for Continuing Professional Education of Lawyers), ch. 2, § 2.7. The term malice alone had little significance beyond meaning an intent to commit an unjustified and inexcusable killing. Id. The purpose of the malice aforethought element was to distinguish between deliberate, calculated homicides and homicides committed in the heat of passion. Kealy, supra at 206. As more and more defendants claimed they lacked an intent to kill before the act was committed, juries and courts increasingly rejected this argument. The result was a case-by-case semantic erosion of the term aforethought, until malice aforethought meant nothing more than the intent to kill had to exist at the time the act was committed. Perkins & Boyce, Criminal Law (3rd ed.), Murder, § 1, p. 58 ([a]s case after case came before the courts for determination ... there came to be less and less emphasis upon the notion of a well-laid plan. And at the present day, the only requirement in this regard is that it must not be an after thought). There was, consequently, a parallel erosion of the distinction between capital murder, for which aforethought was required, and noncapital homicide, for which it was not. Interestingly, although the English courts grew weary of the oft abused lack of aforethought defense, it was nevertheless evident that there was still some interest in distinguishing between a homicide committed in cold-blood and one committed under circumstances that mitigated one's culpability. To express this distinction, the focus shifted from aforethought to malice. Moreland, supra at 11 ([t]he law of homicide seems thus to have now progressed from a place where the mental element was of no importance to a place where at the beginning of the seventeenth century it had become a factor of prime importance). Because there was a need to distinguish the most serious homicide from the rest, and because aforethought no longer had legal significance, malice evolved from being merely an intent to kill to also evidencing the absence of mitigating circumstances. Moylan, supra at § 2.7. Consequently, the presence of malice became both synonymous with the absence of mitigating circumstances and the sole element distinguishing murder from manslaughter. We glean from our examination of manslaughter's historical development that manslaughter is defined to reflect the absence of malice. Thus, the only element distinguishing murder from manslaughter is malice.