Chapter 10

• Provocation


  Culpable homicide that otherwise would be murder may be reduced to manslaughter if the person who committed it did so in the heat of passion caused by sudden provocation
• Provocation


  • Conduct of the victim that would constitute an indictable offence under this Act that is punishable by five or more years of imprisonment and that is of such a nature as to be sufficient to deprive an ordinary person of the power of self-control
  • The accused acted on it on the sudden and before there was time for their passion to cool

  
• Determining provocation


  1. Whether the conduct of the victim amounted to provocation

  2. Whether the accused was deprived of the power of self-control by the provocation

  
• No one shall be deemed to have given provocation to another by doing anything that he had a legal right to do, or by doing anything that the accused incited him to do in order to provide the accused with an excuse for causing death or bodily harm to any human being
• Provocation practice question 1

  • Pompey meets his friend Elbow, they argue about money, Pompey shouts at Elbow, Elbow goes home, gets a knife and stabs Pompey to death
• Provocation practice question 2

  • Moth discovers Rosaline's affair with Costard, threatens Rosaline, Costard shoves Moth, Moth stabs Costard to death
• Intoxication defence


  It is not a defence to an offence that the accused, by reason of self-induced intoxication, lacked the general intent or the voluntariness required to commit the offence, where the accused departed markedly from the standard of care

  
• Departing markedly from the standard of care


  • A person departs markedly from the standard of reasonable care generally recognized in Canadian society and is thereby criminally at fault where the person, while in a state of self-induced intoxication that renders the person unaware of, or incapable of consciously controlling, their behaviour, voluntarily or involuntarily interferes or threatens to interfere with the bodily integrity of another person
• This section applies in respect of an offence under this Act or any other Act of Parliament that includes as an element an assault or any other interference or threat of interference by a person with the bodily integrity of another person
• Intoxication practice question 1


  • Winkel is intoxicated and assaults his friend Snodgrass, then steals his cellphone
• Intoxication practice question 2

  • Dracula takes crystal meth, becomes violent and kills his friend Frankenstein