HAMESUCKEN, 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; Alison's 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 causƒ, or from
personal spite. 5. The punishment of hamesucken in aggravated cases of
injury, is death in cases of inferior atrocity, an arbitrary punishment.
Alison's 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.