Guilty

The state or condition of a person who has committed a crime, misdemeanor, or offence. This word implies a malicious intent, and can only be applied to something universally allowed to be a crime.

Cowp. 275.

In Pleading. A plea by which a defendant who is charged with a crime, misdemeanor, or tort admits or confesses it. In criminal proceedings, when the accused is arraigned, the clerk asks him, “How say you, A. B., are you guilty or not guilty?’’ His answer, which is ^ven ore tenus, is called his plea; and when he admits the charge in the indictment, he answers or pleads guilty; otherwise, not guilty. See Culpbit; Abeaignment. A plea of guilty in a capital case shduld not be received unless the court is satisfied that “it is made by a person of complete intelligence, freely and voluntarily, and with full understanding of the nature and effect of the plea and of the facts upon which it is founded’*; Green v. Com., 12 Allen (Mass.) 166; in Henning v. People, 40 Mich. 733, a Judgment was affirmed when it appeared that the trial judge had had repeated interviews plea was made with every circumstance of fairness and deliberation. The subject is regulated by statute in Michigan and in Texas. In Coleman v. State, 35 Tex. Cr. R. 404, 33 S. W. 1083, where the record stated that the defendant had pleaded guilty after being by the court fully warned of the consequences of such plea, the appellate court held that it did not sufficiently appear that the prisoner was considered sane by the court, or that he was uninfluenced by any fear, or by any persuasion or any hope of pardon, and that these matters should have been presented to the court and the findings made a part of the record. So also where the judgment recited that the defendant “had been duly and legally warned by the court. In open court, of the legal cons^uences” of such plea; Sanders v. State, 18 Tex. App. 372.

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