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Requirements for liability for Homicide - LO3 - Mens Rea Requirement of…
Requirements for liability for Homicide - LO3 - Mens Rea Requirement of Murder
Analysis of meaning of intention
Proposals for reform
R v Moloney (1985)
Held, allowing the appeal and substituting a conviction for manslaughter, that the law on the requisite intent was unclear. Where specific intent is necessary the probability of the accused having foreseen the consequences must be little short of overwhelming if the intent is to be established. Judges should generally refrain from giving elaborate directions to the jury on the meaning of intent.
intention of kill cause serious injury
R v Hancock (1986)
H and S were striking miners who pushed a block of concrete off a bridge onto a motorway underneath, killing the driver of a taxi which was carrying a miner to work. They were convicted of murder after the judge had directed the jury following the guidelines laid down in R. v. Moloney. The Court of Appeal substituted convictions for manslaughter.
R v Shankland (1986)
Held, dismissing the Crown's appeal, that when it was necessary to direct a jury on the issue of intent by reference to foresight of consequences, the words "natural consequences" were not by themselves sufficient to imply probability; the judge should refer to probability and explain to the jury that the greater the probability of the consequence the more likely it was that the consequence was foreseen, and that if it was foreseen the more likely it was that it was intended; since the judge's direction was liable to have misled the jury into concentrating exclusively on the causal link between the act and its consequences, the murder convictions had been rightly quashed
R v Nedrick (1986)
The judge's direction equated foresight with intention.
Held, allowing the appeal and substituting a conviction for manslaughter, that in the light of subsequent authorities the direction was clearly wrong (R. v Moloney (Alistair Baden) [1985] A.C. 905, [1985] 3 WLUK 190 applied and R. v Hancock (Reginald Dean) [1986] A.C. 455, [1986] 2 WLUK 298 applied
R v Woollin (1999)
Held, allowing the appeal, that, in departing from the Nedrick direction and using the phrase "a substantial risk", the judge had blurred the distinction between intention and recklessness and thus between murder and manslaughter. Accordingly, W's conviction could not be regarded as safe and would be quashed and a conviction of manslaughter substituted. the words "to find" were to be preferred to the words "to infer"
R v Matthews and Alleyne (2003)
Whilst a defendant's appreciation of the virtual certainty of the victim's death was insufficient in itself to establish the mens rea for murder, if the defendant appreciated that death was a virtual certainty unless some attempt was made to save the victim, and the defendant had no intention of saving him, this would found the necessary intention for murder.
mercy killings / euthanasia and assisted suicide
R v Inglis (2011)
In the first case of murder involving a mercy killing to reach the Court of Appeal, it was decided that the factors specified in the Criminal Justice Act 2003 Sch.21 para.10(a), (b) and (d), which would normally aggravate the offence of murder, should not be taken to aggravate a murder committed by an individual who genuinely believed that her actions in bringing about the death constituted an act of mercy.
Nicklinson v MOJ (2012)
(1) Voluntary euthanasia is not a possible defence to murder. (2) The DPP is not under a legal duty to provide further clarification of his policy. (3) Section 2 Suicide Act 1961, in obstructing the claimants from exercising a right in their circumstances to receive assistance to commit suicide, is not incompatible with Article 8. (4) The GMC and the SRA are not under a legal duty to clarify their positions. (5) It was unnecessary in this case to decide whether or not the mandatory life sentence for murder, in a case of genuine voluntary euthanasia, is incompatible with the Convention.
R(Conway) v Secretary of State for Justice (2018)
Human rights – Right to respect for private life – Interference with – Appellant diagnosed with terminal motor neurone disease – Seeking to challenge blanket ban on assisted dying through judicial review – Seeking declaration of incompatibility under Human Rights Act that would find ban to be incompatible with right to respect for private life