Homicide Flashcards
What are the 2 brackets under homicide?
Murder and Manslaughter
What are the brackets under manslaughter?
Voluntary Manslaughter (mitigated murder), and Involuntary Manslaughter (Unlawful Act manslaughter, gross negligence manslaughter)
What are the requirements for criminal liability?
Actus reus + Mens rea + no defence
What does the common law offence carry?
A mandatory life sentence
What is the modern definition of murder?
Murder is the unlawful killing of a human being under the King’s peace, with an intention to kill or cause grievous bodily harm
Who can kill?
- Any natural person
- Of the age of criminal responsibility
Actus reus of murder
- Killing took place under the King’s peace
- Victim is a human being
- Death is caused by the defendant’s conduct
Mens rea of murder
- Requires an intention to kill or cause GBH
- Intention has 2 parts: direct of oblique intention
Direct intention + Cases!
- The defendant had direct intention if it was the defendant’s purpose/aim to bring about the prohibited result
- R v Moloney [1985]
Oblique intention + Case!
- The result was virtually certain consequence of the defendant’s conduct
- The defendant foresaw that is was a virtually certain consequence of his conduct
- R v Woollen [1999]
What is provocation?
- When a person is considered to have committed a criminal act partly because of a preceding set of events that might cause a reasonable individual to lose self control
- This makes them less morally culpable than if the act was premeditated and done out of pure malice
When was the provocation defence abolished and what was it replaced with?
Abolished by S.56 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009, and replaced with the loss of control defence
What is the loss of control defence?
- Partial defence to murder
- Must be attributable to a qualifying trigger
What are the 2 parts of a qualifying trigger?
- Fear of serious violence
- Sense of being seriously wronged by things said or done
Exclusion of qualifying trigger
- If the thing said or done was induced by the defendant’s own conduct for the purpose of using violence in response
- Sexual infidelity
A normal persons reaction in defence of loss of control
Person of D’s age and sex, with a normal degree of tolerance and self-restraint and in the circumstances of D, might have reacted in the same or similar way to D
Defence of diminished responsibility
- Partial defence to murder, which can be established where the defendant kills or is a party to the killing of another because the defendant’s medical condition causes the defendant and abnormality of mental functioning that substantially impairs the defendants abilities
Who is the burden of proof on in the defence of diminished responsibility?
The defendant
Abnormality of mental function
- A state of mind that is so different from ordinary people that the reasonable person would term it abnormal
- Need medical evidence to prove
Total impairment
If D’s intoxication is caused by drug/alcohol dependency (also a recognised medical condition), the jury should consider whether the effect of both drug/alcohol dependency and that recognised medical condition substantially impairs D’s ability and causes D to kill.
