Manslaughter

Manslaughter is the crime of unlawful homicide without malice aforethought. Homicide, or the infliction of death, is not a crime when it is done in self-defence against unlawful violence, or when it is done in the execution of the sentence of a court of justice. Thus one whose life is endangered by the violent attack of a madman, and kills the madman, commits homicide, but is innocent of manslaughter. So, too, is the executioner who hangs a convicted murderer. Homicide is unlawful, and amounts to manslaughter when, without being justified in any such manner as has been exemplified above, it is committed with the intention to cause physical injury; or is the result of culpable negligence or omission to perform some legal duty; or is the result of an accident occasioned by some unlawful act. Thus, if one man strike another without intending to kill him, and the blow prove fatal, the striker is guilty of manslaughter; or if, where it is the duty of the master of a ship to keep a lookout for small boats in the ship's way, a boat is run down and its occupants drowned in consequence of the absence of a lookout upon the ship, the master of the vessel is guilty of manslaughter; or if a man is engaged in an unlicensed manufacture of dynamite, and by an accidental explosion of the dynamite another is killed, the manufacturer is guilty of manslaughter. When manslaughter is accompanied by malice aforethought, it becomes murder. See Sir James Stephen's Digest of the Criminal Law.