Malice is implied when no considerable provocation appears, or when the circumstances attending the killing show an abandoned and malignant heart.
Malice would also exist if the acts were done with reckless indifference or deliberate blindness to that invalidity or lack of power and that likely injury.
In English criminal law on mens rea (Latin for "guilty mind"), R v. Cunningham (1957) 2 AER 412 was the pivotal case in establishing both that the test for "maliciously" was subjective rather than objective, and that malice was inevitably linked to recklessness.
In that case, a man released gas from the mains into adjoining houses while attempting to steal money from the pay-meter: In any statutory definition of a crime, malice must be taken ... as requiring either: Lord Diplock confirmed the relationship to recklessness in R v Mowatt (1968) 1 QB 421: In the offence under section 20 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861, the word "maliciously" does import upon the part of the person who unlawfully inflicts the wound or other grievous bodily harm an awareness that his act may have the consequence of causing some physical harm to some other person ...
It is enough that he should have foreseen that some physical harm to some person, albeit of a minor character, might result.In the United States, the malice standard was set in the Supreme Court case of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan,[3] allowing free reporting of the civil rights movement.