State v. Schrader
Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia, 1982.
Author: Jim

Facts: Defendant and the victim got into an argument and the defendant stabbed the victim 51 times.  The trial judge gave this instruction to the jury: “I would advice you that to constitute a willful, deliberate and premeditated killing, it is not necessary that the intention to kill should exist for any set length of time prior to the actual killing; it is only necessary that such intention should have come into existence for the first time at the time of such killing, or at any time previously.”  The defendant argues that such instruction take the ‘pre’ out of the ‘premeditated’.

Procedure: Defendant was found guilty of murder in the first degree.

Defendant’s argument: The defendant argues that the trial judge’s instructions take the ‘pre’ out of the ‘premeditated’.

Issue: Should there be a length of time prior to the killing in which the defendant plans the murder in order to establish the premeditated standard?

Holding: No

Rationale: The word premeditated does not have the same legal definition as the dictionary definition.  Premeditated in the legal sense can be accomplished very quickly “or even in the proverbial twinkling of an eye.”  The court looked at the history of the murder statue to rule that “no time is too short for a wicked man to frame in his mind a scheme for murder, and to contrive the means of accomplishing it.”  Therefore, the defendant’s argument that premeditated requires some length of time of planning before the murder is without merit and the conviction is affirmed.