A summary flowchart to take you easily through each stage of a criminal law exam scenario on murder and manslaughter. Achieved 78 in the exam using these flowcharts.
= the unlawful killing of a human under the Queen's peace,
Coke
unlawful killing
- someone has died
- death is the reversible death of the brain stem controlling basic
body functioning, R v Malcherek and Steel
of a human being
- a child must be out of its mother and be alive, R v Poulton
- unlawful injury inflicted on the mother who delivers an alive child
that then dies is not murder, AG ref no 3 1994
Causation
Factual- but for D's actions the victims death would not have
occurred the way it did, R v White
D's act need not be the sole/ main cause, it is enough their act
contributed significantly, R v Pagett
Legal- despite an intervening event, injuries inflicted by D were still
an operating and substantial cause of death, R v Cheshire
Medical treatment is unlikely to break the chain except in
exceptional circumstances where the treatment was 'palpably
wrong', R v Jordan
Take your victim as you find them/ egg shell, R v Blake
MR:
Defined in R v Maloney as 'either intention to kill or
cause GBH'
- is an entirely subjective test
- if it was their aim, purpose or desire to kill then they
will have direct intention
- if their aim was not death but death/GBH was seen
as a virtually certain consequence of their actions they
will have indirect intent, Nedrick
- if the crime is a result of transferred malice use the
case of Latimer
If direct/ indirect
intent = MURDER
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