Only When Punished

In 1774, the North Carolina state legislature passed an act criminalizing the “willful and malicious killing of slaves.” Such killings carried a punishment of only one year’s imprisonment for a first offense, and death for a second offense. The statute did not criminalize the manslaughter of a slave. In 1791, the legislature commendably decided that it was “disgraceful to humanity” to punish the killing of a slave by only one year’s imprisonment while the same killing of a white man would have been punishable by death. It enacted a statute stating that one who willfully and maliciously kills a slave “shall suffer the same punishment as if he had killed a free man.” This act, however, was emasculated by the decision in State v. Boon. The court there found the word “killed” to raise ambiguity, because “[t]he killing of a free man is punished in different ways, and, in some cases, no punishment is annexed to it.” And while Judge Taylor thought that a murder was defined as “[t]he unlawful killing of a reasonable creature… with malice aforethought,” and that a “slave is a reasonable creature,” he too found the statute too uncertain to sentence the defendant to death.