These notes cover most of the topics taught on the postgraduate conversion courses in the UK (the GDL and the PGDL). They can also cover many introductory papers taught on UK undergraduate Law degrees (LLBs).
These notes include guidance on exam structure and technique where relevant. Compared t...
Criminal Law - Fatal Offences: Murder, Voluntary Manslaughter, Constructive
Manslaughter, Manslaughter by Gross Negligence, Death by Dangerous or
Careless Driving, Corporate Manslaughter
Murder:
AR - The unlawful killing of a human being (Coke):
- The victim is a human being
- For an infant to be given protection of the law of homicide, they must be
wholly expelled from the mother’s body, be alive, and have an existence
independent of the mother - i.e. independent circulation & has drawn
breath after birth (R v Poulton)
- Abortion is not murder
- Unborn child protected by s.58 OAPA 1861
- Unborn children capable of being alive protected by the Infant Life
(Preservation) Act 1929
- The victim is killed
- ‘Death’ defined as ‘the irreversible death of the brain stem, which controls
the basic functions of the body such as breathing’ (Malcherek and Steel)
- D must cause the death of a human being (apply causation tests below)
- Factual - ‘But for’ test - White
- Fact:
- D put poison in mother’s drink
- She had a fatal heart attack after drinking a small amount of
the liquid
- Medical evidence showed the heart failure was unconnected
to the poison
- Held:
- D not liable for homicide
- Legal - tests below
- For omission, would have to specify if it falls under either special
relationship, contractual duty, statutory duty, D creates dangerous
situation
MR:
- Intention to kill, or intention to cause GBH (‘really serious harm’ - DPP v Smith)
- Either direct intention - aim/purpose/goal (Moloney)
- OR indirect intention - primary aim was not the consequence, but D
foresaw the consequence as virtually certain (Nedrick/Woollin)
Causation:
, - Establishing factual causation - The ‘But For’ test:
- ‘But for D’s conduct, would the victim’s death have occurred in the way
that it did?’ (White)
- Legal causation tests:
- Operating and substantial causes of death (R v Malcherek and Steel):
- The injury inflicted by D on the victim must be a ‘substantial and
operating cause’ of death, which means more than negligible -
Malcherek and Steel
- Can have more than one cause of death - D’s act need not be the
sole or main cause of death but must be more than minimal (R v
Pagett)
- Still an operating and substantial cause of death as long as
the intervening act/other cause is not ‘so overwhelming as to
make the original would merely part of the history’ (R v
Smith, Lord Parker CJ)
- Causation in cases of medical negligence:
- Will not break chain of causation, so that D still liable if D’s
act is still a substantial and operating cause of death - R v
Cheshire
- Only if the medical negligence is ‘so overwhelming as to
make the original wound [inflicted by D on the victim] merely
part of the history can it be said that the death does not flow
from the wound’ - R v Smith
- Take your victim as you find them - Blaue - V refused blood transfusion
due to religious beliefs and died, D still guilty after stabbing
- No defence to say that the outcome was unexpected because of
circumstances unbeknownst to you (as long as chain of causation
exists)
- Foreseen and foreseeable intervening acts (‘reasonable
foreseeability’ test) - the chain of causation must not be broken
- To establish the legal cause of death, D must foresee, or a
reasonable person would have foreseen, the events that led to the
victim’s death
- Subjective OR objective criteria to test
- Tends to be very widely interpreted, i.e. takes a very
unforeseen/surprising event to break the chain of causation
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