fatal offences

• murder AR

  the unlawful killing of a reasonable creature in being within the King's peace

  omission - establish duty to act

  causation issues
• murder MR

  express malice - intention to kill

  implied malice - intention to cause GBH
• loss of control and diminished responsibility

  can reduce a conviction from murder to voluntary manslaughter
• loss of control is defined

  under s.54 Coroners and Justice Act 2009
• loss of control 1

  s.54(1)(a) d must have lost self control

  loss of considered judgement (Jewell)

  greater deliberation - less likely loss of control (Clinton)
• loss of control 2

  s.54(1)(b) there must be a qualifying trigger

  s.55(3) fear - serious violence from V to D or identified person (Goodwin)

  s.55(4) anger - things said or done of extremely grave character (Zebeedee)

  D had justifiable sense of being seriously wronged (Hatter)

  can be a combination of both (Dawes)
• limitations of qualifying triggers

  s.55(6)(a) self induced - (Ward)

  s.55(6)(c) sexual infidelity (Clinton)
• loss of control 3

  s.54(1)(c) a person of the same sex and age with a normal degree of tolerance and self-restraint and in the same circumstances of d would have reacted in the same or similar way

  s.54(3) take into account all of d's circumstances
• irrelevant factors of d's circumstances

  intoxication (asmelash)

  personality disorders (wilcocks)

  paranoid schizophrenia , antisocial behaviour disorders (meanzza)

  depression (rejmanski)
• diminished responsibility defined in

  s.2(1) Homicide Act 1957
• diminished responsibility successful

  fallback offence, reduced to voluntary manslaughter
• diminished responsibility 1

  d suffering from abnormality of mental functioning

  (Byrne) - state of mind so different from one of an ordinary person that a reasonable person would term it abnormal
• diminished responsibility 2

  arose from recognised medical condition

  requires medical evidence (bunch)

  psychopathy (Byrne)

  depression (gittens)

  battered woman syndrome (ahluwalia)

  alcoholism (wood)

  paranoia (simcox)

  epilepsy (campbell)

  schizophrenia (moyle)
• diminished responsibility 3

  which substantially impaired d's ability to:

  understand nature of his conduct

  form a rational judgement

  exercise self control (byrne)
• diminished responsibility 4

  abnormality provides an explanation for d's actions in killing (brown)

  must be a casual link between d's amf and killing
• intoxication for diminished responsibility

  transient effect - can't establish defence

  brain damage effect - can establish defence (wood)

  involuntary intoxication can be amf
• unlawful act manslaughter AR

  unlawful and dangerous act that causes death
• unlawful act manslaughter 1

  must be an unlawful act

  must be an act not an omission - (lowe)

  any element of crime missing, not uam (lamb)

  civil wrong will not suffice, must be a crime (Franklin)

  doesn't need to be aimed at victim - (Mitchell)

  doesn't need to be aimed at a person at all - (goodfellow)
• unlawful act manslaughter 2

  unlawful act must be dangerous

  test for dangerous is objective

  (church) - bystander test, sober and reasonable person see risk?

  (Dawson) - only need to see risk of some physical harm

  (Watson) - if d becomes aware of circumstances, makes it more dangerous, s&r learns this too
• unlawful act manslaughter 3

  unlawful act must cause death - (carey)
• unlawful act manslaughter MR


  must have MR for initial unlawful act

  (Newbury and jones) - no need to prove d foresaw any harm from unlawful act
• gross negligence manslaughter 


  d owes v a duty of car but breaches it in a negligent way, causing the death of v - (adomako)
• gross negligence 1

  d owed v a duty of care

  irrelevant that v party to illegal act - (wacker)

  (donoghue v stevenson) - duty owed to people so closely and directly affected by the act

  contract - (pittwood)

  voluntary assumption - (stone and dobinson)

  dr and patient - (adomako)

  driver and passengers - (wacker)

  landlord - (singh)
• gross negligence 2

  d breached duty of care

  act or omission fall below standard of reasonable man
• gross negligence 3


  breach carried risk of death - (misra)
• gross negligence 4


  breach must actually cause death
• gross negligence 5

  breach so bad it was criminal

  disregard life and safety of others - (bateman)

  high degree in negligence - (andrews)
• gross negligence MR


  d didn't intend to kill

  judged by behaviour rather than state of mind