Suicide
The Cyclopedic Law Dictionary · Walter A. Shumaker and George Foster Longsdorf; ed. James C. Cahill · 1922
The Cyclopedic Law Dictionary
Self-destruction and suicide are synonymous and mean the voluntary destruction of one's self.
29 111. App. 439.
If a person who is incapable, by reason of unsoundness of mind, of resisting an insane impulse to take his own life, or to understand the general nature or consequences and effects of his act, kills himself, it is not suicide.
209 111. 33.
At common law, suicide was a felony entailing forfeiture of estate.
1 Hale, P. C. c. 27.
Since the abolition of forfeitures, punishment of suicide is, of course, impossible, but an attempt to commit suicide is indictable (9 Cox, C. C. 247); and one who persuades another to suicide is guilty of murder (4 Bl. Comm. 189; 123 Mass. 422), though, if he be not present at the commission of the suicide, it is held that he cannot be punished, because he is an accessory before the fact, and the prior conviction of the principal is impossible (9 Car. & P. 79).