Murder is the unlawful and intentional killing of a human being by a human being. The most compendious statement of the distinctions drawn by the law of England between murder and manslaughter is given by Sir James Fitzjames Stephen in article 223 of his Digest of the Criminal Law. He says: 'Manslaughter is unlawful homicide without malice aforethought. Murder is unlawful homicide with malice aforethought. Malice aforethought means any one or more of the following states of mind preceding or co-existing with the act or omission by which death is caused, and it may exist when that act is unpremeditated: (a) an intention to cause the death of, or grievous bodily harm to, any person, whether such person is the person actually killed or not; (b) knowledge that the act which causes death will probably cause the death of, or grievous bodily harm to, some person, whether such person is the person actually killed or not, although such knowledge is accompanied by indifference whether death or grievous bodily harm is caused or not, or by a wish that it may not be caused; (c) an intent to commit any felony whatever; or (d) an intent to oppose by force any officer of justice on his way to, in, or returning from the execution of the duty of arresting, keeping in custody, or imprisoning any person whom he is lawfully entitled to arrest, keep in custody or imprison, or the duty of keeping the peace, or dispersing an unlawful assembly, provided that the offender has notice that the person killed is such an officer so employed.' If the act of killing is done in the heat of passion caused by provocation, it is not murder, but manslaughter.
The law presumes that every one who has killed another has murdered him, unless there are circumstances in the case to raise a contrary presumption. Murder is punished by death, manslaughter by penal servitude for life, or by a fine, according to the degree of culpability involved in the crime. The law of Scotland does not substantially differ from that laid down by Sir James Stephen, the chief distinction being that what in England is called manslaughter is in Scotland called culpable homicide. In the United States the only noteworthy distinction from the law of England is the recognition of different degrees of murder. An early act of the legislature of Pennsylvania distinguishes murder by poison or waylaying, or any other deliberate and premeditated killing, or murder committed in the furtherance of any arson, rape, robbery, or burglary, as murder of the first degree, and murder of all other kinds as murder of the second degree. The statute law of other states has similar provisions. In England and Wales during 1856-88 the maximum number of murders (as returned by coroner's inquests) in any one year was 272 in 1866, the minimum 153 in 1879. During that same period the minimum number of executions was 4 in 1871, the maximum 23 in 1875 and 1877. According to a paper in the Journal of the Statistical Society for 1885, the proportion of homicides of all kinds to population was in England and Wales 1 to 63,000, and in the United States 1 to 43,000. From differences in legal classification and administration, it is notoriously difficult to compare the frequency of murder in different countries. But an estimate has been made that, whereas in England there are 7.1 murders per 10,000 deaths, in Germany the proportion is 6.4 murders to 10,000, in France 8, in Austria 8.8, in Switzerland 13.8, in Spain 23.8, in Italy as many as 29.4 per 10,000 deaths. The arguments for and against the abolition of Capital Punishment (q.v.) have been discussed in a separate article; see also EXECUTION, BIRTH (CONCEALMENT OF), SUICIDE; and Holtzendorff, Die Psychologie des Mordes (1875).