Law Scenarios

Suggestions

Common law offence

Lord Coke’s definition: the unlawful killing of a human being under the Queen’s Peace with malice aforethought.

Actus reus - Unlawful killing

Can be an act or an omission - Gibbins v Proctor (1918)

Defendant must have caused the death

• Prosecution must prove the defendant’s act caused the death.
• Must establish causation in BOTH fact and law - referred to as factual and legal causation.

But for test

• But for the actions of the defendant the victim would not have died as and when they did.
• White (1910).

De minimis rule

• Defendant’s actions must have been more than just a minimal cause of the death.

Thin skull test

• Defendant must take the victim as they find them
• Blaue (1975).

Chain of causation - Must be a clear link between the actions of the defendant and the victim’s death. Intervening acts may break the chain of causation. Pagett (1983).

Original injury must be an operative and substantial cause of the death.

• Negligent medical treatment is rarely sufficient to break the chain of causation.
• Smith (1959)
• Cheshire (1991)
• Jordan (1956).

Switching off a life support machine will not break chain of causation - Malcherek (1981).

Mens rea - Malice aforethought

Now known as an intention to kill or intention to cause grievous bodily harm.

Can be either expressed or implied.

Vickers (1957) A person can be guilty of murder even though they did not intend to kill. Vickers broke into a sweet shop, he knew that the owner, an old lady, was deaf, however she came in and saw Vickers, who punched her and kicked her once in the head - she died from her injuries. The Court of Appeal upheld Vickers’ conviction for murder; where a defendant intends to inflict grievous bodily harm and the victim dies, this is sufficient to imply malice aforethought.

The same point was considered in Cunningham

Cunningham (1981) The defendant attacked the victim repeatedly with a chair in a pub, the victim died and the defendant was convicted of murder, his appeal was dismissed by the House of Lords – an intention to cause grievous bodily harm was sufficient for the mens rea for murder.

Direct intent - Defendant desires a result and sets out to achieve it.

Indirect/ oblique intent

Defendant intends one thing but another result actually occurs as a result of his/ her actions.

Hancock and Shankland (1986) The defendants were striking miners, they tried to stop another miner from going to work by pushing a concrete block from a bridge on to the road which he was being driven to work in a taxi. The concrete block hit the car and killed the taxi driver – the defendants were convicted of murder following the Moloney guidelines, but on appeal their convictions were quashed. In Nedrick (1986) the Court of Appeal thought that the judgments in Moloney and Hancock and Shankland needed to be made clearer.

In Nedrick the defendant had a grudge against a woman, he put paraffin through the letter box of her house and set fire to it, a child died in the fire. The defendant was convicted of murder but the Court of Appeal quashed the conviction and substituted it to manslaughter.

‘The jury are not entitled to infer the necessary intention unless they felt that death or serious bodily harm was a virtual certainty as a consequence of the defendant’s actions, and that the defendant appreciated this.’

• This remained the law until the case of Woollin in 1998. The House of Lords felt that the two questions in Nedrick were not helpful and the model direction laid down by Lord Lane, of virtual certainty should be used. Actus reus and mens rea need to be present at the same time for the defendant to be successfully convicted – Thabo Meli v R (1954) Church (1965).