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7 Cards in this Set
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Re A (children) [2000]
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Court of Appeal held that an operation to separate conjoined twins in order to save the life of the stronger was not unlawful even by s.9 of the Offences Against the Person
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Attorney General’s Reference (No. 3 of 1994) [1993] 1 AC 789
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It is only where the original injuries were targeted against the fetus and not its mother that the defendant may be convicted of murder. D stabbed his pregnant girlfriend in the back. No injury to the fetus was detected but it was born prematurely and died four months later from a lung condition attributed to her premature birth.
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R v Malcherek; R v Steel [1981]
R v Steel [1981] |
In 2 separate cases both defendants were convicted of murder. On appeal they contended that the in each of these two cases the doctors did not carry out all the tests for establishing brain death and that the jury should have been allowed to consider whether the cause of death in each case was the switching off of the life-support machine.
“Where a medical practitioner, using generally acceptable methods, came to the conclusion that the patient was for all practical purposes dead, ... [then discontinuation of] treatment ... did not break the chain of causation between the initial injury and the death.” |
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What, according to Lord Steyn, is the problem with the present definition of the mens rea of murder in Powell and Daniels;
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English law has developed a small number of rules to address this problem, usually grouped under the general heading of “joint enterprise”. These rules, as Lord Steyn pointed out in R v Powell (Anthony), R v English [1999] 1 AC 1, 12, [1997] 4 All ER 545, 162 JP 1, are not applicable only to cases of murder but apply to most criminal offences. Their application does, however, give rise to special difficulties in cases of murder. This is because, as established in R v Cunningham [1982] AC 566, [1981] 2 All ER 863, 145 JP 411, the mens rea of murder may consist of either an intention to kill or an intention to cause really serious injury. Thus if P (the primary offender) unlawfully assaults V (the victim) with the intention of causing really serious injury, but not death, and death is thereby caused, P is guilty of murder. Authoritative commentators suggest that most of those convicted of murder in this country have not intended to kill.
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In 2006 the Law Commission’s made its most recent recommendation on the meaning of intention
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“We recommend that the existing law governing the meaning of intention is codified as follows:
1. A person should be taken to intend a result if he or she acts in order to bring it about. 2. In cases where the judge believes that justice may not be done unless an expanded understanding of intention is given, the jury should be directed as follows: an intention to bring about a result may be found if it is shown that the defendant thought that the result was a virtually certain consequence of his or her action |
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Difference between murder and voluntary manslaughter
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Person would be guilty of murder but for the presence of one of three defined mitigating defenses which reduces his criminal liability to that of manslaughter.
o Where the killing resulted from a loss of self-control o Manslaughter by diminished responsibility o Manslaughter by suicide pact |
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Malice of aforethought must be there for murder. What is case?
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Cunningham 1982 defines malice aforethought as intention to kill (express malice) or cause GBH (implied malice)
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