Malicious Burning Law and Legal Definition
A malicious burning or burning or setting fire to property, is such an act done with a condition of mind that shows a heart regardless of social duty and bent on mischief, evidencing a design to do an intentional wrongful act toward another or toward the public without any legal justification or excuse for the burning or setting fire to the property, even though it belongs to the perpetrator. An example of such an act of malicious burning is to set fire to or burn one's own property to thereby accomplish an indirect injury to another or to the public without any real or pretended legal justification or excuse for the doing of that act.
Under some jurisdictions, the mere burning, per se, of one's own property is not made a crime. It is the willful and malicious setting fire to or burning that constitutes the gravamen of the offense. [Love v. State, 107 Fla. 376 (Fla. 1932)].
