Case Law Flashcards
What was found R v Piri?
Recklessness involves a conscious deliberate risk taking. The degree of risk of death foreseen by the accused’s under S167(b) or (d) must be more than negligible or remote. The accused must recognize a real or substantial risk that death would be caused.
What was found in R v Codere?
- The nature and quality of the act means the physical character of the act.
- The phrase does not involve any consideration of the accused’s moral perception nor his knowledge of the moral quality of the act.
- Thus a person who is so deluded that he cuts a woman’s throat believing that he is cutting a loaf of bread would not know the nature and quality of his act.
What was found R v Desmond?
Not only must the object be unlawful, but the accused must know that his act is likely to cause death. His knowledge must accompany that act causing death.
What was found Murray Wright Ltd?
Murray Wright Ltd
Because the killing must be done by a human being, an organisation (such as a hospital or food company) cannot be convicted as a principal offender or parties to the offence.
This is because the offence carries a mandatory life imprisonment.
What was found R v Tomars?
R v Tomars – Formuates the issues in the following way:
- Was the deceased threatened by, in fear of or deceived by the defendant?
- If they were, did such threats, fear or deception cause the deceased to do the act that caused their death?
- Was the act a natural consequence of the actions of the defendant, in the sense that reasonable and responsible people in the defendants position at the time could reasonably have foreseen the consequences?
- Did these foreseeable actions of the victim contribute in a signiicane way to his death?
Threats, Fear, or deception can result in culpable homicide. Examples: Jumps or falls out of a window and dies because they think they are going to be assaulted, Jumps into river to escape an attack or drowns, who has been assaulted believes their life is in danger, jumps from a train and is killed.
What was found R v Horry?
Death should be provable by such circumstances as render it morally certain and leave no ground for reasonable doubt- that the circumstancial evidence should be so cogent and compelling as to convince a jury that upon rational hypothesis other than murder can the facts be accounted for.
What was found Cameron v R?
Recklessness - must prove
Subjective test - consciously/deliberately ran risk
Objective Test - unreasonable act given Circs (would a reasonable person taken risk)
Recklessness is established if:
a) actions would bring about a proscribed result and
b) act unreasonable given the risk
What was found in R v Mane?
- For a person to be an accessory the offence must be complete at the time of the criminal involvement.
One cannot be convicted of being an accessory after the fact of murder when the actus reus of the alleged criminal conduct was wholly completed before the offence of homicide was completed.
What was found in FORREST & FORREST and outline the case law?
In R v Forrest & Forrest two men were charged with having sexual intercourse with a 14-year-old girl who had run away from Child Welfare custody. At trial the girl produced her birth certificate and gave evidence herself that she was the person named in the certificate. The men successfully appealed their convictions on the grounds that the Crown had not adequately proved the girl’s age.
The best evidence possible in the circumstances should be adduced by the prosecution in proof of the victims age.
Generally, involves producing the victims birth certificate and independent evidence that identifies the victim as the person named in the certificate.
What is R v Ranger?
Proximity decided by the Judge.
In the case of R v Ranger, the Victim threatened to shoot the Defendant and her son during an argument and began reaching under the bed, a place he was known to keep guns. The Defendant escaped from the bedroom, ran to the kitchen, uplifted a knife, and stabbed the Victim in the shoulder while he was reaching under the bed but had not grabbed anything yet.
The Court held “If this accused did really think that the lives of herself and her son were in peril because of the Defendant, enraged after the argument, may attempt to shoot them with a rifle near at hand, then it would be going to far, we think, to say that the Jury could not ENTERTAIN a reasonable doubt that a pre-emptive strike was reasonable force in all the circumstances”.
What is R v Harney?
“[Recklessness involves] foresight of dangerous consequences that could well happen, together with an intention to continue the course of conduct regardless of the risk.”
What was found R v Cottle? (Burden of Proof of insanity / Automatism)
Doing something without knowledge of it and without memory afterwards of having done it. A temporary eclipse of consciousness that nevertheless leaves the person so affected able to exercise bodily movements.
An act which is done by the muscles without any control by the mind.
What was found R v Lipman?
Where automatism is brought about by a voluntary in take of alcohol or drugs the Court may be reluctant to accept the actions were involuntary or that the offender lacked intention.
What was found in R v Blaue?
Those who use violence must take their victims as they find them.
EXAMPLE – The Victim, a Jehovah’s witness was stabbed and required a blood transfusion but refused due to religious beliefs, despite a warning that she would die and in fact died the following day. The cause of death was determined as bleeding into the pleural cavity caused by stabbing.
The Defendant appealed that the Victim’s refusal to take a blood transfusion was unreasonable and broke the chain of causation leading to her death. The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal on the grounds that it was not unreasonable, and the stabbing led to her death.
What is R v Clancy?
“The best evidence as to the date and place of a child’s birth will normally be provided by a person attending at the birth or the child’s mother. Production of the birth certificate, if available may have added to the evidence but was not essential”
