Definition
In legal usage, "instantly" means immediately, without delay, and as a direct consequence of the preceding act. The term appears most characteristically in criminal pleading, particularly in indictments for murder and manslaughter, where it functions as a term of art to allege that death followed without interval from the mortal wound or blow inflicted by the accused. In this context, "instantly" is not merely descriptive — it carries pleading significance, asserting that the wound was the proximate and immediate cause of death, with no independent intervening cause breaking the chain of causation.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): At once; without delay. Also: urgently; with insistence; or at the same time.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Without the least delay or interval; at once; immediately. Also, with urgency or importunity; earnestly.
The common meaning and the legal meaning are largely consistent in sense, but the legal deployment of "instantly" is narrower and more consequential than its ordinary use. In everyday speech, "instantly" is an adverb of time. In criminal pleading, it is a term of art that performs a specific function: it satisfies the pleading requirement that the indictment allege the immediacy of death as the direct result of the defendant's act. A researcher encountering "instantly" in an indictment should read it not as mere rhetorical flourish but as a substantive allegation about causation and the absence of intervening time or cause.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working with historical criminal records — particularly indictments, coroner's inquisitions, and early case law in homicide — will encounter "instantly" as a formulaic pleading term. Its presence signals that the drafter was satisfying a common-law requirement: the indictment had to specify not only the time and manner of the mortal wound but also the relationship between that wound and the death. Where "instantly" appears, it typically asserts that death followed as an immediate and direct consequence, distinguishing the case from one where a wound was inflicted and the victim survived for a period before dying (which triggered different pleading rules about the place and time of death).
The temporal limitation in common-law homicide pleading — that death must occur within a year and a day of the injury — made the precise pleading of when death occurred, and how immediately it followed the wound, a matter of real legal consequence. "Instantly" in an indictment was one way of asserting the directness of the causal chain. Failure to adequately plead this connection could be fatal to the indictment on a motion in arrest of judgment.
Researchers consulting older case reporters and form books will find "instantly" embedded in standard pleading formulas for murder by stabbing, beating, or poisoning. It should be read functionally in those sources, not literally — common-law pleading often alleged that a victim died "instantly" even when the actual facts showed a short survival period, because the pleading convention required the causal allegation. This can create confusion when cross-referencing indictments against coroner's records or physician testimony in the same case.
The term has largely disappeared from modern criminal pleading as code pleading and statutory indictment forms replaced common-law formulas. Its appearance in historical sources is a reliable indicator of pre-code drafting conventions.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary defines "instantly" as "immediately; directly; without delay; at once," and identifies its primary legal significance in the context of murder indictments. Bouvier explains that where killing is alleged to have been caused by a battery, the indictment must allege an assault, specify the time when the mortal stroke was given, and specify the time of death — with "instantly" serving to allege the immediate causal connection between the two. This is the clearest available summary of the term's technical function in criminal pleading.
Bouvier's treatment is consistent with what the common-law pleading manuals of the period required: the indictment had to trace the causal path from act to death with sufficient specificity to inform the defendant of the charge and to permit the court to assess whether the legal elements of homicide were alleged. "Instantly" was the conventional shorthand for asserting that no independent cause intervened.
No significant divergence among the historical sources on this term. Its meaning is stable and narrow. What the historical dictionaries do not address — because it falls outside their scope — is the forensic and evidentiary tension that arose in actual trials when "instantly" as pleaded conflicted with medical testimony about the time of death. That gap must be filled from case reporters, not dictionaries.