Unlawful Act Manslaughter- Involuntary Manslaughter

• Definition

  • Common Law
  • " Applicable where D without the Mens Rea for Murder but with a sufficient degree of culpable conduct (unlawfulness) does an unlawful and dangerous act, which results in the death of another person"
• Unlawful Act 


  • Need a crime, not a tort, not omission
  • Crime needs to be fully proven and not a strict liability offence
  • R v Mackie- Assault
  • R v Williams and Davies- Robbery
  • R v Goodfellow
  • DPP v Newbury- Criminal damage
• Dangerous act 


  • Crime needs to come with "risk of some harm" (R v Church)
  • Objective test "would all sober and reasonable people recognise the danger" (DPP v Newsbury)
  • R v Dawson- Harm to V was too unforseeable
  • R v Watson- Fragility made harm foreseeable
  • R v JM and SM- harm of any type has to be foreseen
• Causing the Death 


  • Full rules of causation
  • D has to be "substantial cause of death"
  • Corion- Augustine- D was the substantial cause of death
  • Schoid- substantial cause of death
  • Carey- not cause of death
• Requirements 


  1. Unlawful Act
  2. Dangerous Act
  3. Causing of the death