Homicide

Homicide

Types of Homicide
 Homicide - unlawful killing of a person.
 Murder.
 Manslaughter.
 Voluntary.
 Involuntary.
 Assisted suicide.
 Infanticide.
 Vehicular homicide offences.
 ‘A rickety structure set upon shaky foundations’.
 Law Commission, Murder, Manslaughter and Infanticide (No 304,2006).

Murder – Sentencing
 Mandatory life sentence (only offence that carries this).
 Minimum tariff period.
 Currently 21 years before considered for release.
 Always increases.
 Prior to this the death penalty was used.
 Release on licence.
 Continued monitoring.
 Can be called back to prison at any time if considered a danger.
 Criminal Justice Act 2003, s269 and sch21.

Murder – Definition
 17th century definition - “unlawfully killeth … any reasonable creature in rerum
natura under the King’s peace … so as the party wounded, or hurt etc., die of the
wound or hurt within a year and a day after the same” – Sir Edward Coke, 3 Institutes
of the Laws of England 47.
 ‘Year and a day’ rule was abolished in 20th century.
 Advancements in medical technology.
 Modern definition of murder – ‘unlawful killing of any person under the Queen’s
peace with malice aforethought’.

Murder – Actus Reus and Mens Rea
 Actus reus.
 Act element – anything that causes the result.
 Circumstance element – that the victim is a person under the Queen’s peace.
 Result element – death.
 Mens rea.

,  Act element – intentional/voluntary.
 Circumstance element – knowledge/intention, no mens rea.
 Result element – intention to kill or cause GBH.

Actus Reus
 Act or omission.
 Gibbins and Proctor [1918].
 Couple neglected to feed the child of one of the parties.
 Had a duty to do so.
 Outcome – possible to commit murder by omission, provided all other
elements are satisfied.
 Victim is a reasonable person in being.
 Fully expelled from mother’s womb.
 Have to have been born alive to be classed as murder.
 Rance [1991].
 Not necessary for cord to be cut.
 A-G’s Ref (No 3 of 1994) [1998].
 Victim is pregnant and stabbed.
 Foetus doesn’t count legally as a person.
 Abortion is not classed as murder.
 Ceases at brain-stem death.
 Airedale NHS Trust v Bland [1993].
 Under the Queen’s peace.
 Not part of a legally declared act of war.
 Killing in battle does not count as murder.
 Causation.
 Show that the defendant caused the death of the victim.

Mens Rea
 ‘Malice aforethought’.
 Intention to kill or cause GBH.
 Cunningham [1982].
 Intention to cause GBH is enough.
 Constructive liability.
 GBH with intent gets transferred into murder due to the addition of
the death.
o A-G’s Ref (No 3 of 1994) [1998].
 Lord Mustill – “the GBH rule is an outcropping of old law from which
the surrounding strata of rationalisations have withered away”.

Murder – Defences

,  General defences – except duress.
 Special defence for doctors?
 Adams [1957].
 Doctor charged for murder having used strong relieving drugs.
 Justice Devlin – there is no special defence for doctors but “he is
entitled to do all that is proper and necessary to relieve pain even if
the measures he takes may incidentally shorten life”.
 Cox [1992].
 Doctor prescribed non-therapeutic drugs with intention of causing
death.
 Partial defences.
 Reduces crime from murder to voluntary manslaughter.

Murder – Reform?
 Lord Goff, ‘The Mental Element in Murder’ (1988) 104 LQR 30.
 Law Commission 2006 recommendations:
 First degree murder – defendant must intend to kill or to cause GBH with the
awareness of a likelihood of death.
 Second degree murder – (no mandatory sentence) killing with intent to do
serious injury, killing with intent to do injury (not serious) but with knowledge
of risk of death, killing where there is a partial defence.
 Manslaughter – risk taking rather than intentional harm.

Structure of Homicide Offences