murder

• Murder

  The unlawful killing of an individual
• Actus reus for murder

  • Unlawful killing of a reasonable person under the king's peace with malice aforethought, express or implied
  • Can be an act or an omission
  • In case of an omission there has to be a duty to act, shown in stone v Dobinson
• A foetus isn't considered a being because it isn't independent from the mother
• In AGR no.3 1994, the defendant wasn't liable for the murder because defendants actions wasn't the substantial cause of death and transferred malice can't be applied to transfer intent from the mother to the baby
• Causation

  • An important factor in murder
  • Factual causation
  • Legal causation
• Factual causation


  Determined by the but for test, established from r v white
• Legal causation


  Established from r v pagett, where the defendant's actions must be the substantial and operating cause of death
• Medical treatment doesn't usually break the chain of causation unless it's so independent from defendant's action and so significant that it makes defendants actions insignificant, shown in r v smith and r v Jordan
• Victims can only break the chain of causation if their actions are unreasonable therefore unforeseeable, shown in r v Williams
• Doctors are allowed to switch of life support machines of people who are brain dead, shown in malcherok v steel, where the victims on life support machine weren't showing any activity in their brain
• Test of death

  Where the brain stem is dead
• Mens rea for murder

  Intention to cause serious harm or to kill
• Intention


  A decision to bring about a consequence, defined in r v mohan
• Intention to inflict GBH resulting in death of victim is enough to imply intention for murder, stated in r v Vickers
• Indirect intention

  When defendant didn't intend a particular result but in acting the way they did they realised the act may occur, also known as foresight of consequence shown in hancock v shankland
• Foresight of consequence isn't intention but it can be used as evidence for intention and from there the jury will decide if its intention
• The greater the probability of death the more likely it is that consequence was foreseen and therefore intended, shown in hancock v shankland
• Nedrick test


  Determines whether the defendant had intention to commit the crime, consisting of 2 questions: 1) was the consequence virtually certain 2) did defendant foresee that is was virtually certain? If yes then d can be found guilty of murder