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Murder - Coggle Diagram

- - - - And not what he/she should have foreseen or intended, or what anyone else might have foreseen or intended in the same situation
        
        The jury can find either direct or oblique intention:
        
        Oblique Intention
        
        The defendant does not desire the outcome, but it is a virtually certain consequence of their actions, and they go ahead regardless.
        
        Direct Intention
        
        The defendant desired the outcome
        
        Current approach to mens rea for murder
        
        R v Nedrick (1986)- Indirect intention can exist where the defendant foresaw a result as a virtual certainty
        
        R v Woolin (1998)- set out the following points:
        
        Juries should only infer intent to do serious injury if:-
        
        They are satisfied that serious injury was virtually certain from the defendant’s actions
        
        That the defendant appreciated the risk
    - - DPP v Smith (1961).
- - - - This might be the act or omission of a third party which occurs after the defendant’s act, and before the death of the victim.
        
        Defendants can only be held responsible for a death where their acts are both the ‘factual’ and ‘legal’ cause of the victim’s death.
        
        If an intervening act breaks the chain of causation the defendant will not be liable for murder.
        
        Factual causation
        
        In order to establish the factual causation, the prosecution must prove two things:
        
        The ‘de minimus’ rule - The prosecution must prove that the original injury arising from the defendant’s conduct was more than a minimal cause of the victim’s death.
        
        The ‘but for’ test - R v White (1910)
        
        Legal Causation
        
        The judge must direct the jury as to whether the defendant’s acts are sufficient to amount in law to a cause of the victim’s death.
        
        There must be no break in the chain of causation, meaning there must be no intervening act that would prevent the defendant from being liable.
        
        1 more item...
        
        If the prosecution fail to prove both factual and legal causation of the death, the defendant will escape liability for murder, on the ground that the original injury was not in law the cause of death. However, the defendant may still be liable for the original injury.
- - - - The Law Commission has suggested that the following definition could be used:
        
        ‘A person acts intentionally with respect to a result when he or she acts either:
        
        Knowing that it will be a virtually certain to occur or
        
        Knowing that it would be virtually certain to occur if he or she were to succeed in his or her purpose of causing some other result.’
        
        In order to bring it about; or