INSTRUCTIONS AND REQUESTS FOR INSTRUCTIONS IN JURY TRIALS. ESPECIALLY ADAPTED TO THE PRACTICE OF THOSE STATES WHERE SECOND EDITION REVISED. BY MARTIN L. NEWELL, COUNSELOR AT LAW. CHICAGO: CALLAGHAN & COMPANY. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1888, BY CALLAGHAN & COMPANY, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 368612 Stereotyped and Printed." by tho Chicago Legal News Company. PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. In offering this work to the profession, it may not be improper to state the considerations which induced its undertaking, and the objects sought to be accomplished by it. No attempt has been made to write a formal treatise on the law of instructions, or the practice of instructing juries; the design has been rather to furnish the profession in those States where instructions are required to be in writing, a work of practical utility, by collecting together, in a somewhat connected form, the decisions of the higher courts regarding the general form and essential requisites of written instructions, to be given by the court to the jury; and also, by furnishing carefully prepared general instructions upon many of the more common and intricate questions likely to arise in a general practice. There is, perhaps, no other branch of the practice in which a young practitioner feels the need of assistance so much as in the preparation of his instructions, and requests for instructions to the jury. He generally commences the practice of his profession not only without experience, but without even a theoretical knowledge of the subject, and, in the absence of some work of this kind, without any means of acquiring such knowledge. If he refers to his usual text-books, he will find stated the general principle of law which he seeks, together with an account of its origin, history, mutations, contrary holdings and the reasons upon which it is based, with illustrations drawn from other systems of jurisprudence, while its exceptions, qualifications and limitations are treated of in another chapter; all of which may be proper enough for a learner, but it is of little assistance in the attempt to give a concise and exact statement of the whole of the law upon the point in question. It not unfrequently happens that, for greater certainty, he quotes, in his instructions, verbatim, from an opinion given by the higher courts in a similar case, and ultimately finds, to his |