s.20 GBH/wound Q2

Question 1

Introduction

Answer 1

-S. 20 Offences Against the Person Act 1861.
-Malicious wounding or inflicting grievous bodily harm.
-The actus reus can either be a wound or GBH.
YOU WILL ONLY GET CREDIT FOR THE INJURY RELEVANT TO THE SCENARIO.

Question 2

Wound

Answer 2

-Moriarty v Brooks: wound means a break to the 2nd layer of the skin.
-Eisenhower: a ruptured blood vessel in the eye did not break the 2nd layer of the
skin because internal injuries are not a wound.
-However, if an internal cavity is ruptured and bleeds out (not internal bleeding), this
is a wound.
-E.g. D punches Vs nose which bleeds from the nasal cavity.

Question 3

Grevious bodily harm

Answer 3

-DPP v Smith: GBH means “really serious harm”.
-Dugdale & Furmston: the harm is serious enough to require hospital treatment.
-GBH can be psychiatric - Burstow: a campaign of harassment including abusive phone calls, following V, distributing offensive cards about her, threatening letters, causing psychiatric illness was GBH.
-GBH can be biological - Dica: D knew he had HIV and had unprotected sex, passing
HIV to V.
-GBH can be applied indirectly – Martin: D placed an iron bar over the exits of a theatre and then caused a panic by shouting “fire”. Several people were seriously
injured.

Question 4

Inflict

Answer 4

• D’s actions must cause the harm.
• Factual causation: but for D, V would not have been harmed (White).
• Legal causation: Ds actions contribute to the GBH in a more than minimal way (Pagett).
• There are no intervening acts that break the chain of causation.(Roberts, Smith/Cheshire/Jordan)

Question 5

Mens Rea

Answer 5

• Intention or recklessness to cause some harm.
• Savage: D does not mens rea for the serious harm that V actually suffers.
• Parmenter: D must foresee risk of some harm to satisfy s.20
• Then choose which mens rea applies (direct, oblique or reckless) AND APPLY IT.