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Summary Criminal Law - Murder
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Goes through all the elements of homicide, applicable cases and the relevant law.
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HOMICIDEHomicide:
May be lawful or unlawful
- EG: of unlawful homicide: murder, manslaughter, infanticide, corporate manslaughter, various offences of
causing death by use of a motor vehicle
Sources of these offences:
1. Common law = murder and manslaughter
2. Statute = all the other offences mentioned above
Definition of murder is derived from the definition set out by Lord Coke: “Murder is when a man of
sound memory, and of the age of discretion, unlawfully killeth within any country of the room any reasonable
creature in rerum natura under the Kings peace, with malice aforethought, either expressed by the party or
implied by law, so was the party wounded or hurt, etc. die of that wound or hurt, etc. within a year and a day
after the same.”
- In modern language, the offence of murder requires D unlawfully to kill another person under
the Queen’s peace, and to do so intending to kill or cause GBH.
Murder
MR ‘malice aforethought’ at common law according to:
Vickers [1957] = intention to kill or cause GBH
AR The unlawful killing of a human being under the Queen’s peace.
Unlawful killing
Done without lawful defence
Of a human being
The Victim – there must be proof that D killed a reasonable person/human being
However, deformed or disabled they are human beings and protected by the law of homicide:
Dudley v Stephens
Authority = Re A (conjoined twins: surgical separation) 2011
When does life begin?
It is not homicide to destroy a baby not yet born alive, nor
To cause it to be stillborn: AG’s Reference (No 3 of 1994) 1998
But all of these activities are dealt with by other offences.
BUT: If a person is alive, however brief the time left for her, or however disabled she may be –
that person is protected by the law of Homicide: Dudley v. Stephens
Mercy Killing is NOT permitted - Inglis 2010
Life begins when:
Two requirements are satisfied:
The whole body must have emerged into the world, and
The child must have breathed and lived and breathed through its own lungs without deriving any
of its living through any connection to its mother
A-G’s Ref (No 3of 1994) 1998: If born alive, but dies due to antenatal injuries to mother or child,
the person responsible CANNOT be convicted of murder but may be convicted of manslaughter
When does life end:
V will be considered medically dead at the point of ‘brain-dead’and this has been accepted by the
HOL in Bland.
Where V’s condition for short of brain there, we will not be considered and therefore remains a
‘person capable of being murdered’.
Medical dilemma…when is it permissible to switch off the life-support machine?
Royal College of Physicians Test 1976:
Brain stem death – test as to whether any of the vital centres of the brain stem is still functioning
In 1995, they stated: brain stem death is equivalent to the death of the individual and defined
death as:
The irreversible loss of the capacity for consciousness, combined with irreversible loss of capacity
to breathe
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