The Orphan's Insult

The Defendant, a young railroad worker, had endured repeated crude insults from a fellow worker, who habitually called him a "son of a bitch." The epithet stung the Defendant especially because he had been raised an orphan and revered his mother's memory, and he had warned the deceased to stop. On the day of the killing, after being called the name once more, the Defendant seized a steel bar and struck the co-worker a fatal blow. The Defendant claimed the deceased had also made a threatening motion toward him, raising self-defense, and argued that at worst the insulting words provoked a heat of passion reducing the offense to manslaughter. The Prosecution contended that mere words, however offensive, cannot reduce a killing from murder, and that the Defendant struck out of anger rather than fear.