UDAM

• unlawful and dangerous act manslaughter
• X is likely to be liable of involuntary manslaughter as X lacks the MR of murder. In particular, he is likely to be charged with unlawful act manslaughter.
• This offence is provided under common law.
• The Actus reus is: an unlawful act, a dangerous act and the unlawful act must have caused the death.
• unlawful act:

  • There must be an identifiable unlawful act as outline in lamb and confirmed in Ariobeke.
  • There must be an unlawful act - an omission will not suffice
  • APPLY - identify the criminal action that has lead to the death e.g non fatal offences but NOT S.18
• dangerous act:

  • church provides that an act is dangerous if a reasonable person would recognises that the act could cause some harm to the other person
  • For it to be dangerous, the D will be compared to a reasonable person with the same knowledge as the D or with the knowledge the D should have as said in Dawson
• The dangerous act does not need to be aimed at the victim as said in Mitchell.
• The dangerous act may not be intended to cause harm to a person.it is enough for harm to be aimed at property, if an individual dies as a result as seen in Goodfellow and Philpott.
• The unlawful act must have caused he death:

  • The D must be the factual and legal cause of death
  • APPLY - discuss either factual or legal causation
• however, if there are as eries of unlawful acts by the D, it doesnt need to be shown which particular act caused the death, just that any one of them did as outlined in Attorney-general's reference No.4 of 1980
• The mens rea of UDAM is the mens rea of the unlawful act (Newsbury and Jones)

  APPLY - write out the MR of the unlawful act that has been chosen for the AR