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- HOMICIDE OFFENCES
- The offence of murder, involuntary manslaughter and partial defences to murder which
reduce a murder conviction to one of ‘voluntary’ manslaughter.
- Offence of Murder
- The unlawful killing of another person in the Queen’s peace.
- Murder is a result crime: Ds conduct (the act or omission) must take place in particular
circumstances (i.e. under the Queen’s peace and where V is a person) and cause Vs
death - a result.
- What is a person?
- Human life begins at birth
- E.g. Offences Against The Person Act 1861, s58, Abortion Act 1967,
- R v. Poulton (1825) 5 C & P 329 - we know that the unborn child becomes a human
being is when the unborn child is born alive, and capable of independent respiration,
however the act of respiration need not actually have begun.
- R v. Senior (1832) 1 Mood CC 346 - D harms an unborn child which is subsequently
born alive, but then later died from the injuries sustained? Courts have clarified that such
acts can satisfy the Actus Reus of murder. Problematic - Mens rea.
- AGs Ref (No.3 of 1994) [1998] AC 245 - D stabbed X, a pregnant woman, only
intending to injure X. X’s baby, V, died from the effects of the stab injury to X, four
months after being born. Problematic: Mens Rea - transferred malice. The foetus by
definition is not a person, so Mens Rea cannot be transferred. Courts decided this would
be a double transfer of Mens Rea - you would have to transfer Ds intention to do GBH
from X to V, as the foetus, as it then was. Then the second transfer would be from V as
a foetus to V as a human being, which V became subsequently at birth. Because there is
no such thing as a double transfer, D was convicted of manslaughter.
- When does life end?
- E.g. Re: A (A Minor) [1992] 3 Med LR 303 - the Criminal Law accepts the medical
definition of death (when X stops breathing, once the heart stops pumping blood and
when the brain ceases to function).
- Brain death is a non-reversible condition which involves the non-function of the brain
stem which controls otherwise the reflexive movements of the body.
- R v. Malcherek and Steel [1981] 1 WLR 690 - Two separate appeals were heard
together. In Malcherek the defendant had stabbed his wife. In Steel the defendant was
accused of sexually assaulting and beating a woman over the head with a stone. In both
cases the victims had been taken to hospital and placed on life support machines. The
doctors in the respective cases later switched off the life support machines as both
victims were not showing any activity in their brain stem. The defendants sought to
argue that the doctors' actions constituted a novus actus interveniens which broke the
chain of causation. Their convictions were upheld - the test of death is where the brain
, stem has died. Thus at the time of switching off the machine, the victims were already
dead. The doctors could not therefore be the cause of death.
- Airedale NHS Trust v. Bland [1993] AC 789 - confirmed in this case that human life
ends when brain death occurs.
- Requirements for murder
- The killing has to be unlawful. Therefore, D cannot rely on self defence. There is no
defence applicable. Example of self defence - R v. Beckford [1998] AC 130
- The killing must take place during the Queen’s peace - during peacetime and not
wartime.
- War and the killing of enemy aliens are not counted as homicide offences.
- Has D caused the death of V?
- R v. Adams [1957] Crim LR 365 - D must have accelerated or hastened Vs death by
more than a negligible amount. (de minimis)
- Murder can be committed by act or omission. As usual, factual and legal causation
apply.
- In practise, most omissions that cause death are usually prosecuted as gross negligence
manslaughter.
- R v. Gibbins and Proctor (1918) 13 Cr App R 134 - an omission can be charged as
murder where it causes the death of V.
- Mens rea for murder
- An intention to kill or cause grievous bodily harm (GBH)
- R v. Vickers [1957] 2 QB 664
- R v. Cunningham [1982] AC 566 - D kills V by hitting him over the head with a chair.
Even though D had not intended to kill V, he had intended to do GBH which was enough
to convict him of murder.
- R v. Rahman [2008] UKHL 45 - a group of people, including D, attacked V, who
sustained a serious stab wound which caused his death. The prosecution could not
prove which person in the group delivered the stab wound. However, D was still
convicted of murder as the courts held that either a secondary party or as a primary
party, Rahman intended to cause GBH to the victim, which is enough to satisfy the mens
rea requirement for murder.
- The submission that a secondary party to murder must foresee the subjective intentions
of the primary party to be convicted was rejected as complicated.
- Lord Bingham said that the GBH murder rule - “May lack logical purity, but it is
underpinned by a quality of earthy realism”
- Meaning of intention
- Can be direct and indirect/oblique intention. It is subjectively assessed.
- R v. Moloney [1985] AC 905 - a direct intention to murder.
- R v. Woolin [1999] 1 AC 82 - test for indirect intention carried out.
, - GBH meaning - “really serious harm” - DPP v. Smith [1961] AC 290
- Correspondence of Actus Reus and Mens Rea?
- Fair labelling/correspondence purist - believes Actus Reus and Mens Rea must
always coincide.
- Change of normative position argument - if X embarks on dangerous conduct, X
should take the consequences which flow from that.
- ‘Involuntary’ Manslaughter Offences
- In ‘voluntary’ manslaughter, D does not intend to kill or cause GBH. However, there is
sufficient fault to justify criminal liability.
- Three types of manslaughter offences - constructive manslaughter, gross negligence
manslaughter and reckless manslaughter.
- ‘Involuntary’ manslaughter is an umbrella term for these three offences. As such,
involuntary manslaughter itself is not an offence.
- Constructive Manslaughter
- D must have performed an act which was (i) unlawful, (ii) dangerous, and which (iii)
caused the death of V - authority for those three elements comes from AGs Ref (No. 3
of 1994).
- Constructive manslaughter is a result crime: Ds acts (note: the offence cannot be
committed by omission - see below) must take place in particular circumstances (ie.
those required for the base crime that D has committed and which are objectively
dangerous) which cause both the required result of the base offence and the ultimate
result - V’s death.
- Requirements of constructive manslaughter
- Must be unlawful - the actus reus and mens rea of a base criminal act (not a civil wrong)
required.
- Examples of base criminal offences -
- R v. Goodfellow (1986) 83 Cr App R 23 - Criminal damage was the base offence in this
case.
- R v. Franklin (1883) 15 Cox CC 163 - confirmed that the base act must be a criminal
offence and not a civil offence. D was walking along the beach and picked up an empty
beer crate which he threw into the sea. The crate hit V on the head and subsequently
died. Prosecution argued that the base offence was trespass to goods, which is a civil
wrong (tort). There can be no liability based off a civil base offence.
- Must the base criminal act be ‘intrinsically’ criminal?
- Andrews v DPP [1937] AC 576 - Established that the base crime must be intrinsically
criminal.
- R v. Lamb [1967] 2 QB 981 - Two boys were playing with a revolver. There were two
bullets in the chamber but neither were opposite the barrel. The two boys believed that
