Criminal Law Revision Notes (for case details see separate doc)
Chapters
1. Mens Rea and Actus Reus (Components of Crime)
2. Murder (correspondence principle, transferred malice, oblique intention)
3. Voluntary Manslaughter - Loss of Self Control
4. Voluntary Manslaughter - Diminished Responsibility
5. Unlawful Act Manslaughter (Involuntary)
6. Non-Fatal Offences against the person
7. Defences to Assault and Battery
8. Non-Fatal Offences and Consent (Brown)
9. Sexual Offences (Rape and Critiquing the law)
10. Criminal Damage
11. Theft
12. Self-Defence
13. Duress and Necessity
14. Intoxication
15. Automatism & Insanity
16. Inchoate Offences & Attempt (NOT ON EXAM)
17. Parties to Crime - Complicity - Accessorial Liability
Chapter 1 - Actus Reus and Mens Rea
Actus Reus + Mens Rea – Defences = Criminal Liability
Actus Reus – ‘guilty act’
Mens rea – ‘guilty mind’
Actus Reus - ‘Guilty Act’
Actus Reus component of criminal liability helps us to find what conduct is
considered harmful enough to be held criminal.
Generally, for the actus reus, we require proof that the defendant did a particular
act, proof that it caused a particular result, and proof that the actus reus occurred
in certain cir
cumstances.
The principle of causation is used to determine whether the defendant caused the harm to
the victim.
- Causation is established through common law, with no statutes outlining the
principle
Causation has two elements:
1. Factual Causation
- Must be proven that the defendant’s actions factually caused harm to the victim
- Established through the (sine qua non) ‘but for’ test.
- The but for test - but for the defendant’s actions, the harm to the victim wouldn’t
have occurred - case of R v White [1910] 2 KB 124 CA
, - Factual causation is broad, and the defendant’s conduct doesn’t have to be the sole
cause of harm to the victim - Benge (1846) 2 Car & Kir 230.
2. Legal Causation
- This test is used to limit the but for test so that criminal offences don’t become too
broad
- Looks to see if the defendant is legally blameworthy for the harm.
- Legal causation as a policy-driven notion uses notions of culpability, responsibility
and foreseeability to select the most appropriate, factual cause as the basis for
liability, even if this is not the most immediate cause of death.
- In Hughes, the court held that causation must be allied to something that is
blameworthy in a relevant way. The court held that D’s actions couldn’t be held as a
blameworthy cause of death because the victim was high and driving on the wrong
side of the road.
- The defendant’s actions must have been a substantial/significant cause of death.
- The defendant’s actions need to be more than a de minimus cause of harm.
However, if you have already established that the actions factually caused harm,
then they will be more de minimus.
- Also, must be found that D’s actions are an operative cause of harm - Rafferty [2007]
EWCA Crim 1846
Novus actus interveniens - A Break in the Chain of Causation
‘The general principles are that the free deliberate and informed intervention of a second
person, who intends to exploit the situation created by the first, but is not acting in concert
with him, is held to relieve the first actor of criminal responsibility’ - R v Latif [1996] 2 Cr App
R 92 per Lord Steyn
- Need to assess whether the defendant’s actions are still the operative cause of death
(or harm)
Who breaks the chain?
Act from D
Act of God
Act of the Victim
Act of Third Party
Act of the Victim
- General principle is that the free, voluntary, and informed actions of V can break the
chain of causation.
- Where the victim’s acts are a foreseeable response to the defendant’s actions, they
will not break the chain of causation (Mackie [1973] 57 Cr App R 453).
- Dear [1996] Crim LR 595
- Egg shell skull principle: The defendant must take the victim as they find them. They
must accept any medical condition that might increase the level of harm caused,
even if that medical condition isn’t known or obvious to both the defendant or
victim.
- Hayward (1908) 21 Cox CC 692 established eggshell skull principle
, - Blaue [1975] 1 WLR 1411 - accepted (religious) beliefs or other aspects of the victim
that may, for example, affect medical treatment.
Act of a Third Party (medical treatment)
- It is extremely unlikely that medical personnel will be found to have broken the
chain of causation, this is for public policy reasons.
- Exception: Jordan (1956) 40 Cr App R 152 “palpably wrong treatment” was found to
have broken the chain of causation.
- The Courts have never since found any medical treatment palpably wrong.
- Treatment was NOT found as palpably wrong in the cases of Smith [1959] or
Cheshire [1991]
- Could see ‘palpably wrong’ treatment as being a test (never really works) for
whether medical treatment of third-party intervention can break the chain.
- Michael (1840) 9 C&P 356 - shows how third-party is not always medical treatment.
Multiple Causes
- Test for legal causation is that the defendant’s contribution remains significant and
operating cause of harm to the victim, even if it is not the sole cause.
‘The accused acts need not be the sole cause or even the main cause of death, it being
sufficient that his acts contributed significantly to that result.’ - Cheshire [1991] 3 All ER
670 per Beldam LJ at 851
- You can also find multiple defendants doing multiple things liable for the victim’s
death
- When multiple cases are concurrently at work, there is no requirement that the
defendant’s conduct is sufficient to cause the criminal harm by itself, and the case
of Warburton [2006] EWCA Crim 627 can help illustrate this.
- The defendant’s actions alone were not the sole cause of death, but they both
contributed to a significant factor in the chain of events that led to the victim’s
death, and so were liable.
Mens Rea - ‘Guilty Mind’
Due to the inability to read a person’s mind, mens rea if for the prosecution to
prove, and the jury to believe beyond reasonable doubt, based on the surrounding
circumstances of the crime.
Strict liability offences = offences with no MR component
No clear definition of MR in statute - the actual MR language differs between
offences.
Generally, MR has a hierarchy, with intention being the most serious and hardest to
prove MR term; and lower down the hierarchy is recklessness.
MR language:
- Intention (direct and oblique)
- Knowledge/belief
- Wilful blindness
- Recklessness
- Negligence
, Intention (direct)
The most serious standard of mens rea. In criminal law it is viewed as the most
blameworthy state of mind.
Cunliffe v Goodman [1950[ 2 KB 237: Lord Asquith defined intention as one which
‘connotes a state of affairs which the party ‘intending’ does more than merely
contemplate: it connotes a state of affairs which, on the contrary, he decided, as far
as in him lies, to bring about.’
‘Things done as means or ends are intended; side-effects are not’ 1
Intention is not the same as desire and is also very different from motive.
Therefore, criminal law does not care about motive, it purely looks at whether or
not the defendant intended the result.
In the case of Hales [2005] EWCA Crim 1118, the court accepted that the defendant’s
motive was not to kill the officer, however he was prepared to kill in order to
escape. As the result, the court held that he did have the intention to kill, as
intention is broader than motive.
The court ruled in Maloney [1985] AC 905 that simply being able to foresee harm to
the victim is not enough for intention.
Hancock and Shakland [1985] per Lord Scarman ‘foresight does not necessarily imply
the existence of intention’.
Oblique Intention
The case of Woollin [1999] AC 82 demonstrates oblique intention.
- The defendant got angry and threw his baby against a hard surface, killing the baby.
- The defendant was charged with murder on the basis that the mens rea of murder is
intention to kill or cause GBH.
- The defendant argued that he did not have intention and just lost his temper.
- However, the fact that the baby would have died, or at least suffered really serious
injuries, as a result of being thrown against a wall is a distinct possibility of these
actions; therefore, it would be easy to argue that he foresaw death or serious injury.
- Woollin appealed to the House of Lords
- The Lords ruled that to use the phrase ‘substantial risk’ over-expanded the scope of
MR for murder.
- The test they held was instead a virtual certainty. The jury had to consider whether
the harm to the victim was a virtual certain consequence of the defendant’s
actions, and that the defendant appreciated that this was the case.
As a result, a defendant can either have direct intent, or they can have oblique intent,
where they didn’t intend the harm caused to the victim, but the harm was a virtually
certain consequence of their actions.
The test for Oblique Intention
1
Simester and Sullivan Criminal Law: Theory and Doctrine (2016) p 136
Chapters
1. Mens Rea and Actus Reus (Components of Crime)
2. Murder (correspondence principle, transferred malice, oblique intention)
3. Voluntary Manslaughter - Loss of Self Control
4. Voluntary Manslaughter - Diminished Responsibility
5. Unlawful Act Manslaughter (Involuntary)
6. Non-Fatal Offences against the person
7. Defences to Assault and Battery
8. Non-Fatal Offences and Consent (Brown)
9. Sexual Offences (Rape and Critiquing the law)
10. Criminal Damage
11. Theft
12. Self-Defence
13. Duress and Necessity
14. Intoxication
15. Automatism & Insanity
16. Inchoate Offences & Attempt (NOT ON EXAM)
17. Parties to Crime - Complicity - Accessorial Liability
Chapter 1 - Actus Reus and Mens Rea
Actus Reus + Mens Rea – Defences = Criminal Liability
Actus Reus – ‘guilty act’
Mens rea – ‘guilty mind’
Actus Reus - ‘Guilty Act’
Actus Reus component of criminal liability helps us to find what conduct is
considered harmful enough to be held criminal.
Generally, for the actus reus, we require proof that the defendant did a particular
act, proof that it caused a particular result, and proof that the actus reus occurred
in certain cir
cumstances.
The principle of causation is used to determine whether the defendant caused the harm to
the victim.
- Causation is established through common law, with no statutes outlining the
principle
Causation has two elements:
1. Factual Causation
- Must be proven that the defendant’s actions factually caused harm to the victim
- Established through the (sine qua non) ‘but for’ test.
- The but for test - but for the defendant’s actions, the harm to the victim wouldn’t
have occurred - case of R v White [1910] 2 KB 124 CA
, - Factual causation is broad, and the defendant’s conduct doesn’t have to be the sole
cause of harm to the victim - Benge (1846) 2 Car & Kir 230.
2. Legal Causation
- This test is used to limit the but for test so that criminal offences don’t become too
broad
- Looks to see if the defendant is legally blameworthy for the harm.
- Legal causation as a policy-driven notion uses notions of culpability, responsibility
and foreseeability to select the most appropriate, factual cause as the basis for
liability, even if this is not the most immediate cause of death.
- In Hughes, the court held that causation must be allied to something that is
blameworthy in a relevant way. The court held that D’s actions couldn’t be held as a
blameworthy cause of death because the victim was high and driving on the wrong
side of the road.
- The defendant’s actions must have been a substantial/significant cause of death.
- The defendant’s actions need to be more than a de minimus cause of harm.
However, if you have already established that the actions factually caused harm,
then they will be more de minimus.
- Also, must be found that D’s actions are an operative cause of harm - Rafferty [2007]
EWCA Crim 1846
Novus actus interveniens - A Break in the Chain of Causation
‘The general principles are that the free deliberate and informed intervention of a second
person, who intends to exploit the situation created by the first, but is not acting in concert
with him, is held to relieve the first actor of criminal responsibility’ - R v Latif [1996] 2 Cr App
R 92 per Lord Steyn
- Need to assess whether the defendant’s actions are still the operative cause of death
(or harm)
Who breaks the chain?
Act from D
Act of God
Act of the Victim
Act of Third Party
Act of the Victim
- General principle is that the free, voluntary, and informed actions of V can break the
chain of causation.
- Where the victim’s acts are a foreseeable response to the defendant’s actions, they
will not break the chain of causation (Mackie [1973] 57 Cr App R 453).
- Dear [1996] Crim LR 595
- Egg shell skull principle: The defendant must take the victim as they find them. They
must accept any medical condition that might increase the level of harm caused,
even if that medical condition isn’t known or obvious to both the defendant or
victim.
- Hayward (1908) 21 Cox CC 692 established eggshell skull principle
, - Blaue [1975] 1 WLR 1411 - accepted (religious) beliefs or other aspects of the victim
that may, for example, affect medical treatment.
Act of a Third Party (medical treatment)
- It is extremely unlikely that medical personnel will be found to have broken the
chain of causation, this is for public policy reasons.
- Exception: Jordan (1956) 40 Cr App R 152 “palpably wrong treatment” was found to
have broken the chain of causation.
- The Courts have never since found any medical treatment palpably wrong.
- Treatment was NOT found as palpably wrong in the cases of Smith [1959] or
Cheshire [1991]
- Could see ‘palpably wrong’ treatment as being a test (never really works) for
whether medical treatment of third-party intervention can break the chain.
- Michael (1840) 9 C&P 356 - shows how third-party is not always medical treatment.
Multiple Causes
- Test for legal causation is that the defendant’s contribution remains significant and
operating cause of harm to the victim, even if it is not the sole cause.
‘The accused acts need not be the sole cause or even the main cause of death, it being
sufficient that his acts contributed significantly to that result.’ - Cheshire [1991] 3 All ER
670 per Beldam LJ at 851
- You can also find multiple defendants doing multiple things liable for the victim’s
death
- When multiple cases are concurrently at work, there is no requirement that the
defendant’s conduct is sufficient to cause the criminal harm by itself, and the case
of Warburton [2006] EWCA Crim 627 can help illustrate this.
- The defendant’s actions alone were not the sole cause of death, but they both
contributed to a significant factor in the chain of events that led to the victim’s
death, and so were liable.
Mens Rea - ‘Guilty Mind’
Due to the inability to read a person’s mind, mens rea if for the prosecution to
prove, and the jury to believe beyond reasonable doubt, based on the surrounding
circumstances of the crime.
Strict liability offences = offences with no MR component
No clear definition of MR in statute - the actual MR language differs between
offences.
Generally, MR has a hierarchy, with intention being the most serious and hardest to
prove MR term; and lower down the hierarchy is recklessness.
MR language:
- Intention (direct and oblique)
- Knowledge/belief
- Wilful blindness
- Recklessness
- Negligence
, Intention (direct)
The most serious standard of mens rea. In criminal law it is viewed as the most
blameworthy state of mind.
Cunliffe v Goodman [1950[ 2 KB 237: Lord Asquith defined intention as one which
‘connotes a state of affairs which the party ‘intending’ does more than merely
contemplate: it connotes a state of affairs which, on the contrary, he decided, as far
as in him lies, to bring about.’
‘Things done as means or ends are intended; side-effects are not’ 1
Intention is not the same as desire and is also very different from motive.
Therefore, criminal law does not care about motive, it purely looks at whether or
not the defendant intended the result.
In the case of Hales [2005] EWCA Crim 1118, the court accepted that the defendant’s
motive was not to kill the officer, however he was prepared to kill in order to
escape. As the result, the court held that he did have the intention to kill, as
intention is broader than motive.
The court ruled in Maloney [1985] AC 905 that simply being able to foresee harm to
the victim is not enough for intention.
Hancock and Shakland [1985] per Lord Scarman ‘foresight does not necessarily imply
the existence of intention’.
Oblique Intention
The case of Woollin [1999] AC 82 demonstrates oblique intention.
- The defendant got angry and threw his baby against a hard surface, killing the baby.
- The defendant was charged with murder on the basis that the mens rea of murder is
intention to kill or cause GBH.
- The defendant argued that he did not have intention and just lost his temper.
- However, the fact that the baby would have died, or at least suffered really serious
injuries, as a result of being thrown against a wall is a distinct possibility of these
actions; therefore, it would be easy to argue that he foresaw death or serious injury.
- Woollin appealed to the House of Lords
- The Lords ruled that to use the phrase ‘substantial risk’ over-expanded the scope of
MR for murder.
- The test they held was instead a virtual certainty. The jury had to consider whether
the harm to the victim was a virtual certain consequence of the defendant’s
actions, and that the defendant appreciated that this was the case.
As a result, a defendant can either have direct intent, or they can have oblique intent,
where they didn’t intend the harm caused to the victim, but the harm was a virtually
certain consequence of their actions.
The test for Oblique Intention
1
Simester and Sullivan Criminal Law: Theory and Doctrine (2016) p 136
