Wounding with Intent

Question 1

Wounding with intent to cause GBH

Answer 1

Crimes Act 1961, Section 188(1) 14 years
- With intent to cause GBH
- To any person
- Wounds OR maims OR disfigures OR causes GBH
- To any person

Question 2

Wounding with intent to injure

Answer 2

Crimes Act 1961, Section 188(2) 7 years
- With intent to injure any person OR with reckless disregard for the safety of others
- Wounds OR maims OR disfigures OR causes GBH
- To any person

Question 3

Intent

Answer 3

There must be an intention to commit the act, and to get a specific result.

‘Intent’ means that an act or omission must be done deliberately. The act or omission must be more than involuntary or accidental.

Question 4

R v Taisalika

Answer 4

The nature of the blow and the gash which it produced point strongly to the presence of the necessary intent.

Question 5

R v Collister

Answer 5

Circumstantial evidence from which an offender’s intent may be inferred can include:
- the offenders actions an words before, during and after the event.
- the surrounding evidence.
- the nature of the act itself.

Question 6

Grievous Bodily Harm

Answer 6

‘harm that is really serious’

Question 7

DPP v Smith

Answer 7

‘Bodily harm’ needs no explanation and ‘grievous’ means no more or no less than really serious.

Question 8

Person

Answer 8

‘person’ is generally accepted by judicial notice

Question 9

Injure

Answer 9

Section 2 Crimes Act 1961
Means to cause actual bodily harm

Question 10

R v Donovan

Answer 10

‘Bodily harm’ includes any hurt or injury calculated to interfere with the health or comfort of the victim. It need not be permanent but must be more than transitory and trifling.

Question 11

Recklessness

Answer 11

‘recklessness means the conscious and deliberate taking of an unjustified risk’.

Question 12

Cameron v R

Answer 12

Recklessness is established if:
a) the defendant recognised that there was a real possibility that:

i) his or her actions would bring about the proscribed result;and or
ii) that the proscribed circumstances existed; and

b) having regard to that risk those actions were unreasonable.

Question 13

R v Tipple

Answer 13

Recklessness requires that the offender know of, or have conscious appreciation of the relevant risk, and it may be said that it requires ‘a deliberate decision to run the risk’.

Question 14

Wounds (R v Waters)

Answer 14

A wound is a ‘breaking of the skin evidenced by the flow of blood’. May be internal or external.

Question 15

Maims

Answer 15

deprive the victim of the use of a limb or of one of the senses. needs to be some degree of permanence.

Question 16

Disfigures

Answer 16

to deform or deface; to mar or alter the figure or appearance of a person.

Question 17

R v Rapana and Murray (disfigures)

Answer 17

Disfigures covers not only permanent damage but also temporary damage.

Question 18

Doctrine of transferred malice

Answer 18

It is not necessary that the person suffering the harm was the ‘intended’ victim. Where the defendant ‘mistakes the identity’ of the person injured, or where harm intended for one person is accidentally inflicted on another, he is still criminally responsible, under the Doctrine of transferred malice, despite the wrong target being struck.

Question 19

psychiatric injury

Answer 19

Bodily harm can be psychiatric, includes really serious psychiatric injury identified as such by appropriate specialist evidence.

Question 20

harm, not limited to immediate harm

Answer 20

R v Mwai the defendant faced multiple counts int relation to two women who he infected with HIV, and several others whom he put at risk, through unprotected sex.

In affirming his conviction for “causing grievous bodily harm with reckless disregard for the safety of other”. the Court of Appeal held that section 188 is not limited to the immediate harmful consequences of the offender’s actions.