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Homicide II - voluntary manslaughter (Defendant commits the AR of murder…
Homicide II - voluntary manslaughter
Defendant commits the AR of murder (Coke) without the MR (Vickers) - still mentally culpable in some respects but does not intend to kill or cause GBH
Contains two offences
Unlawful act (constructive) manslaughter
Gross negligence manslaughter
Not analysed in the usual way i.e. actus reus and mens rea - simply a list of elements to consider
Unlawful act (constructive manslaughter)
DPP v Newbury and Jones - all four steps must be proved beyond reasonable doubt
Defendant intentionally (voluntarily) did an act
Must be aware of and able to control their physical actions
The act was unlawful
The unlawful act must be a criminal (rather than civil) act - Franklin
Lamb - conviction quashed due to lack of MR
Scarlett - conviction quashed because defendant used reasonable force in self-defence
The act must be intrinsically unlawful - Andrews v DPP
Andrews - not sufficient if only unlawful because of the way it was carried out - here it was dangerous driving - not enough as the act must always be unlawfl
There must be an act rather than an omission (Lowe)
The unlawful act was dangerous
Church - "the unlawful act must be such as all sober and reasonable people would inevitably recognise must subject the other person to, at least, the risk of some harm resulting therefrom, albeit not serious harm"
DPP v Newbury and Jones - emphasised that this is an objective test - not about that individual, but rather a reasonable person in the defendant's position
The unlawful act caused the death of the victim
Factual causation
Legal causation
Causing death by supplying drugs
Administration of the drug by the defendant
Cato - injected
Kennedy - upheld Cato
Supply of drugs and assisting the deceased to take the drugs - Kennefy
Chain of causation broken - victim committed free act by self-injecting
Manslaughter by gross negligence
Adomako
The existence of a duty of care
Same as for law of tort i.e. was it foreseeable that the defendant's acts would cause harm to the victim?
Omissions (ante)
Singh
Ruffell
The defendant can have a duty of care for these purposes even though liability would be avoided in the law of tort - Wacker
Breach of that duty
Same as for law of tort i.e. did the defendant's acts/omissions fall below the standard of the reasonable person in the defendant's position?
That the breach caused the death
Factual causation (ante)
Legal causation (ante)
That there was a risk of death
Misra and Srivastava - "where the issue of risk is engaged... it relates to the risk of death, and is not sufficiently satisfied by the risk of bodily injury or injury to health"
That the breach of duty was so bad as to amount to "gross negligence"
"The question is whether, having regard to the risk of death involved, the conduct of the defendant was so bad in all the circumstances as to amount to a criminal act or omission - per Lord Mackay in Adomako - Litchfield
Gross negligence does not require evidence of the defendant's state of mind - A-G's Ref (No 2 of 1999)