Legal Term: HAMESUCKEN

Definition: Scotch law. The crime of hamesucken consists in "the felonious seeking and invasion of a person in his dwelling house." 1 Hume, 312; Burnett, 86; Alisons Princ. of the Cr. Law of Scotl. 199.

2. The mere breaking into a house, without personal violence, does not constitute the offence, nor does the violence without an entry 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 proceeded 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 maybe 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 personal 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 causŠ, or from personal spite. 5. The punishment of hamesucken in aggravated cases of injury, is death in cases of inferior atrocity, an arbitrary punishment. Alisons Pr. of Cr. Law of Scotl. ch. 6; Ersk. Pr. L. Scotl. 4, 9, 23. This term wag formerly used in England instead of the now modern term burglary. 4 Bl. Com. 223.

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