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Summary Diminished Responsibility
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Summary sheet - Volunteer Manslaughter (Diminished Responsibility)Voluntary manslaughter can be used to reduce a murder charge to voluntary
manslaughter. There two sections that can be used within Voluntary manslaughter,
‘loss of control’ and ‘Diminished responsibility’. Looking at Diminished
responsibility was created in section (52) of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009.
Diminished responsibility can be cited due to a mental impairment. This is recognised
as a partial defence reducing a murder change to voluntary manslaughter. The main
difference between murder and manslaughter is the sentencing as Murder charges life
in prison, however volunteer manslaughter can charge up to discharge with a criminal
record to life in prison.
To prove diminish responsibility there is a three part criteria;
- The defendant had an abnormality of mental functioning.
- It resulted from a recognised medical condition.
- It substantially impaired the defendant’s ability to understand the nature of their
conduct, or form a rational judgement, or exercise self-control.
The first criteria to be met ‘The defendant had an abnormality of mental functioning.’
which means “a state of mind so different from other people that it would be
considered as abnormal.” This is established by the Byrnes’ (1960) case, in this case
Byrnes is a sexual psychopaths who has an inability to control his sexual desires.
Which lead to him raping and betting young girls. The courts concluded that this
wasn’t “normal behaviour” and this is an abnormality of mental functions. Therefore
changing the charge which was murder to volunteer manslaughter. However, the
sentencing was still the same as if it was murder, of life in prison.
The second criteria to be met ‘resulted from a recognised medical condition.’ which
means that “the jury is not bound to accept medical evidence but expect psychiatric
evidence is very important.” The existing medical condition, comes from existing lists
than can be classified and will be accepted is the physical, psychiatric and
psychological. There are many different kinds of medical conditions such as
Psychotic disorders (Byrnes 1960), clinical depression, epilepsy, post-natual
depression (Reynold 1988), pre- menstrual tension (English 1981), batter wife
syndrome (Ahluwalia 1993) and this list is still getting updated. In the case of R v
Ahluwalia (1993) after years of physical and mental abuse in her marriage, the
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