by twelve men a mockery and a farce. ... What ulterior purpose was to be accomplished or what feeling of interest or resentment was to be gratified by such an extraordinary judicial usurpation as this we do not pretend even to conjecture; but we do not hesitate to declare that to find a parallel for such an unscrupulous prostitution of dignity, such an unblushing betrayal of the judicial office, we must go back to the days of Jeffreys. The definition of murder as stated by Shaw was "the killing of any person in the peace of the Commonwealth, with malice aforethought, either express or implied by law." Malice, as defined by the Chief Justice, included "not only anger, hatred and revenge, but every other unlawful and unjustifiable motive." Manslaughter was defined by Shaw as "the unlawful killing of another without malice". The distinction, as Leonard Williams Levy notes, is "..no small matter, particularly to the accused whose life is at stake. The existence of malice distinguishes murder from manslaughter, and manslaughter, the unlawful killing of a human being without malice, does not carry the death penalty." Having made the distinction in the law between murder and manslaughter, Shaw then argued, "Upon this subject, the rule as deduced from the authorities is, that the implication of malice arises in every case of intentional homicide; and, the fact of killing being first proved, all the circumstances of accident, necessity, or infirmity, are to be satisfactorily established by the party charged, unless they arise out of the evidence produced against him to prove the homicide, and the circumstances attending it." While this would appear to be contrary to the principle of "innocent until proven guilty," Shaw's charge to the jury has been interpreted to mean that if the prosecution's evidence proves that a life was taken and does not produce any evidence of extenuating circumstances, the law will imply that malice existed. It then, and only then, becomes the defense's burden to show extenuating circumstances. In 1850, the law required the prosecution to prove the existence of a crime, that is, the corpus delicti. In murder cases this had generally meant that the prosecution had to physically produce the corpse of the person alleged to have been murdered. In that only body parts and some teeth had been found, Shaw stated, This case is to be proved, if proved at all, by circumstantial