negativing defenses

Unnecessary anticipation of defenses, indicating want of skill in pleading a cause of action. 41 Am J1st PI § 87. Usually unnecessary and inadvisable in drawing an indictment. 27 Am J1st Indict § 63. In indictments, matters of defense need not, as a rule, be negatived, and where the statute creating the offense contains exceptions or provisos, not so incorporated with the clauses of the statute defining the offense that they enter into its description and are inseparable from it, the indictment need not set out that the defendants do not come within the exceptions or negative the provisos, but where the exceptions are stated in the clause which defines the offense, and are so incorporated with it that one cannot be read without the other, or, if embodied in a subsequent clause, section, or statute, they are so incorporated with the words used to define the offense that they become a part of the definition, it is necessary, in the absence of statute, to negative them, so that the description of the offense in the indictment may correspond with the description and elements in the statute. United States v Cook (US) 17 Wall 168, 21 L Ed 538.