HAMESUCKEN. In Scotch Law.
The crime of hamesucken consists in "the felonious seeking and invasion of a person in his dwellingshouse." 1 Hume, 312; Burnett, 86; Alison, Crim. Law of Scotl. 199.
2. Th6 mere breaking into a house, with out personal violence, does not constitute the offence, nor does the violence without an en try with intent to commit an assault. It is the combination of both which completes the crime. 1. It is necessary that the invasion of the house should have proceeded from forethought malice ; but it is sufficient if, from any illegal motive, the violence has been meditated, although it may not have pro ceeded from the desire of wreaking personal revenge, properly so called. 2. The place where the assault was committed must have been the proper dwelling-house of the party injured, and not a place of business, visit, or occasional residence. 3. The offence may be committed equally in the day as in the night, and not only by effraction of the building by actual force, but by an entry obtained by fraud, with the intention of inflicting per sonal violence, followed by its perpetration.
4. But, unless the injury to the person be of a grievous and material character, it is not hamesucken, though the other requisites to the crime have occurred. When this is the case, it is immaterial whether the violence be done lucri cause or from personal spite. 5. The punishment of hamesucken in aggra vated cases of injury is death ; in cases of inferior atrocity, an arbitrary punishment. Alison, Orim. Law of Scotl. ch. 6; Erskine, Inst. 4. 9. 23.
3. This term was formerly used in Eng land instead of the now modern term bur glary. 4 Blackstone, Comm. 223.
But in Hale's Pleas of the Crown it is said, " The common genus of offences that comes under the name of hamaeeken is that which is usually called housebreaking; which some times comes under the common appellation of burglary, whether committed in the day or night to the intent to commit felony: so that to of this kind is of two tures." 1 Hale, Pl. Cr. 547 ; 22 Pick. Mass. 4.