Odger's English Common Law

288
MANSLAUGHTER.
control, and the deliberate act of returning to A.'s house with the knife is
evidence of malice. 1
Where B., who is armed, enters into a contest with A., who is unarmed,
and where in any other way B. fights under an unfair advantage,
it will be murder if A. is killed; the fact that blows had been inter-
changed will not in such circumstances reduce the crime to manslaughter.
So where two officers, who have been drinking, quarrel, and one of them
draws a sword and kills the other before he can draw and get on his
guard, there is evidence of malice to justify the jury in finding the
aggressor guilty of murder. 2
II. Unintentional Manslatjghteb.
This is of two kinds :
—
(a) Where the prisoner does a criminal act and in so
doing unintentionally causes death.
(b) "Where the prisoner does an act which is not in itself
criminal, but does it so negligently that it causes death.
(a) Criminal act or omission, causing Death.
Where the prisoner commits a crime and thereby causes
death, he is guilty of manslaughter at the least. It is not
necessary that he should intend to cause death, or that he
should know that his criminal act was likely to cause death
it is enough that it does cause death. If his act was such
that it would probably cause death, and the prisoner knew
this and yet deliberately persisted in doing that criminal act,
such reckless indifference to the probable results of his
criminal design would be deemed to amount to malice, and in
strict law he would be guilty of murder. If on the other
hand his act was one which was at all likely to cause death,
and the prisoner ought to have known this, but through
blundering heedlessness did not know it, and did the act,
then, whether the act be in itself criminal or not, the prisoner
1 B. v. Mason (1756), Foster's Crown Cases, 132 ; B. v. Hayward (1833), 6
C. & P. 157.
2 Per Bayley, J., in B. v. Whiteley (1829), 1 Lewin, at p. 176.
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