Criminal Law Flashcards
What is a crime?
A public wrong
What is the purpose of sentencing? (5)
Punishment, reduction of crime, reform & rehabilitation, protection of the public and reparation by offenders to the victims
When is their criminal liability?
Actus reus + Mens rea + Absence of valid defence
What is the IDEA structure for criminal liability?
Identify: the defendant, defendants act/omission and the offence
Define the law: actus reus and mens rea
Explain the law with help of statute and/or case law
Apply law to the facts of the case
What are the different types of Actus reus?
(4)
Conduct
Result offences
Surrounding Circumstances
Omissions
Actus Reus:
What are conduct offences?
Only require certain acts to have been committed. Examples: false representation, theft and demand by menace.
Actus reus:
What are result offences?
Action must lead to a consequence. Examples: murder, manslaughter, GBH, ABH and criminal damage
Actus reus:
What is an example of a surrounding circumstance offences and why?
Theft, as the prosecution has to show property belonged to someone else
Result crimes require that the defendant’s conduct cause a particular result. Causation is part of the actus reus of these types of offences. What are the two aspects to causation that must be proved?
Factual causation: The jury must be satisfied that the acts or omissions of the accused were, in fact, the cause of the relevant consequence.
Legal causation: It must be established that the acts or omissions of the accused were a legal cause of that consequence.
What is the ‘but for’ test?
Established in R v White: causation must be factually be proved that ‘but for’ the acts or omissions of the accused, the relevant consequence would not have occurred in the way that it did.
If you eliminate the act of the defendant, would the prohibited harm have occurred anyway?
What is the principle in R v Pagett for legal causation.
Requires that the defendant is the ‘operating and substantial’ cause of the prohibited consequence.
Which is the key authority for the principle of legal causation that the defendant’s act must be the ‘substantial’ cause of the prohibited harm?
R v Hughes: The defendant’s act must be the ‘substantial’ cause of the prohibited harm.
What are the 3 key legal causation principles?
The defendant’s act must be the ‘substantial’ cause of the prohibited harm, R v Hughes.
The consequence must be caused by the defendant’s culpable act, R v Dalloway.
The defendant’s act need not be the only cause of the prohibited consequence, R v Benge.
What is novus actus interveniens (an intervening act)?
A subsequent event or act of either the victim or a third party which renders the defendant’s part in the consequence very small, breaking the chain of causation and meaning that the defendant is not criminally liable.
When does medical negligence break the chain of causation?
In general courts are reluctant to allow it the break chain of causation. R v Smith: where the 2nd cause is so overwhelming as to make the original causation merely part of history.
When do acts of 3rd parties break the chain of causation?
R v Pagett: the actions of the 3rd party were ‘free deliberate and informed’
Acts of the victim: What is the fright or flight test?
R v Williams and Davis: The jury should consider two questions: first, whether it was reasonably foreseeable that some harm, albeit not serious harm, was likely to result from the threat itself: and, secondly, whether the deceased’s reaction was within the range of responses which might be expected from a victim placed in the situation which they were. The jury should bear in mind any particular characteristic of the victim and the fact that in the agony of the moment he may act without thought and deliberation.
Acts of the victim: What are the tests for refusal of medical treatment?
the defendant’s conduct makes an operative and significant contribution to the death
Acts of the victim: When does the victims suicide break the chain of causation?
V nonetheless dies from the original wound, R v Dear; or
the act was reasonably foreseeable e.g. where the defendant causes a brilliant pianist to lose her fingers, or a keen sportsman to be paralysed (applying the rule in R v Roberts and R v Williams and Davies); or
the D’s unlawful act was a significant and operating cause of death and at the time of the attack it was reasonably foreseeable that the victim would die by suicide as a result of V’s injuries, R v Wallace.
Acts of the victim: When does the victims suicide not break the chain of causation?
the injuries inflicted by the defendant have healed, but the victim goes on to die by suicide (distinguishing R v Dear); or
it was a voluntary and informed decision of the victim to act, R v Kennedy.
What is the ‘thin skull’ rule in legal causation?
Provides that a person who inflicts harm on another cannot escape liability if the victim, owing to some pre-existing infirmity or peculiarity, suffers greater harm than would have been expected as a result of what the accused has done.
Put simply, the defendant must take the victim as they find them. - R v Hayward
When will natural events break the chain of causation?
Natural events will only break the chain of causation if they are ‘extraordinary’ and not reasonably foreseeable.
For example, if D knocks V unconscious and leaves V on the beach then V is drowned by the incoming tide, D has legally caused V’s death. The natural event of the tide coming in is reasonably foreseeable.
Defendants are generally not liable for omissions. However if liability is to be imposed what is the criteria?
Offence is capable of an omission, there is a legal duty to act, that duty is breached, that breach caused actus reus of offence to be committed and when necessary there is a relevant mens rea.
In general no failure unless there is a legal duty to act.
Where is there a legal duty to act? (6 possibilities)
Statute
Special relationship - parent & child, doctor & patient and spouses
Voluntary assumption
Contract
The defendant creating a dangerous situation and fails to do anything to remedy it
Public office
