VAN LARE, J.S.C.: Although neither malice, grudge nor motive is a necessary ingredient to a charge of murder in this country so long as the evidence establishes an intentional killing by a sane person as in this case, the prosecution is nonetheless not debarred from leading evidence from which any of these matters could be inferred. The evidence of the quarrel and fight between the deceased and the appellant prior to the killing from which malice is inferrable in this case was that of the appellant’s wife, a witness for the prosecution; and this gave ground for the only legal point taken in this appeal.
It was argued that because the appellant’s wife swore on the Bible when she gave evidence, the presumption was that she was a Christian wife and therefore not a compellable witness and the judge should not have allowed her to be called by the prosecution. This would have been a point of some importance as in law a wife, meaning a Christian wife, is not a compellable witness against her…