5. Homicide

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Herring
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Mercy Killing ◽  
Homicide Law ◽  
Diminished Responsibility

This chapter discusses homicide in the criminal law, which can be divided into the following categories: murder, manslaughter, infanticide, and a number of specific offences concerned with causing death while driving. It considers suicide pacts, mercy killing, and euthanasia, homicide statistics, non-homicide killings, and diminished responsibility. Significant academic and political energy is put into homicide law, given the relatively few homicide offences that take place each year. What this reveals is that the law’s approach to homicide has great symbolic importance in both political and legal terms.

5. Homicide

Criminal Law ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 230-321
Author(s):  
Jonathan Herring
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Mercy Killing ◽  
Homicide Law ◽  
Diminished Responsibility

This chapter discusses homicide in the criminal law, which can be divided into the following categories: murder, manslaughter, infanticide, and a number of specific offences concerned with causing death while driving. It considers suicide pacts, mercy killing, and euthanasia, homicide statistics, non-homicide killings, and diminished responsibility. Significant academic and political energy is put into homicide law, given the relatively few homicide offences that take place each year. What this reveals is that the law’s approach to homicide has great symbolic importance in both political and legal terms.

scholarly journals Diminished responsibility and alcohol

2010 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 193-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nuwan Galappathie ◽  
Krishma Jethwa
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Law Reform ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Life Sentence ◽  
The Law ◽  
Diminished Responsibility

SummaryIn England and Wales diminished responsibility is a partial defence to the charge of murder. If successfully argued by the defence, it reduces the charge from murder to manslaughter and thus avoids the mandatory life sentence. Alcohol has been reported to be a feature in up to 80% of all homicides but for many years the judiciary have set an almost unattainable threshold for the disease of alcoholism to amount to a finding of diminished responsibility, in accordance with other aspects of criminal law. Reform of the law on murder is likely to take many years but it is timely to recap the current law on diminished responsibility and review advances in case law in England and Wales on alcohol.

scholarly journals Personality Disoder and Their Judicial- Psychiatric-estimation of the Russian Federation

2009 ◽  
Vol 24 (S1) ◽  
pp. 1-1
Author(s):  
S. Vasyukov ◽  
A. Baeva
Keyword(s):  
Personality Disorder ◽  
Mental Disorders ◽  
Personality Disorders ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Criminal Liability ◽  
Icd 10 ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Diminished Responsibility

In modern Russian criminal law means diminished responsibility, that the subject is not capable to regulate meaningly legally significant behaviour at the moment of socially dangerous act. Such disability comes at presence if the subject has the chronic or time mental disorder, an aphrenia or other disease state of mentality. The specified clinical phenomena define medical criterion of diminished responsibility. Special interest represents disorders which in ICD- 10 concern to «Personality Disorders» (F60-F68). Here mental disorders which have no so-called remedial basis are meant, or in their structure it is impossible to note signs of weakening process. At the same time they not only qualitatively differ from the accepted norm, but also under known conditions possess that depth or expression that can be regarded as medical criterion of the formula of diminished responsibility. The research which has been spent in the Department of psychogenias and personality disorders of Institute of Serbsky included 80 men at the age from 20 till 45 years by which the diagnosis «Personality disorder» was established. It has shown that there can be 3 variants of influence on responsibility: they can cause full loss of liability; can essentially reduce the criminal liability; their presence can be neutral and not render influences on liability. The analysis of expert judgements shows, that in expert judgements about disability of the subject to regulate the behaviour meaningly it is necessary to estimate components both medical, and psychological criteria of diminished responsibility.

Pragmatism Preserved? The Challenges of Accommodating Mercy Killers in the Reformed Diminished Responsibility Plea

2017 ◽  
Vol 81 (3) ◽  
pp. 177-200
Author(s):  
Matthew Gibson
Keyword(s):  
Law Reform ◽  
Homicide Law ◽  
Interpretive Flexibility ◽  
Diminished Responsibility

This article examines the operation of the reformed English diminished responsibility plea in mercy killer cases. In particular, it makes three claims. First, it predicts that—like its predecessor—the revised doctrine will be stretched, where necessary, to accommodate these offenders. This is because (i) normative arguments remain for convicting them of manslaughter instead of murder and (ii) other partial defence routes will usually be unavailable. Secondly, it contends that such pragmatism will now be facilitated by a disconnect between (i) the defence’s post-reform narrowing and (ii) its ongoing interpretive flexibility. Thirdly, given that disconnect, it suggests that this pragmatism will be problematic. Notably, it will (i) compromise the plea’s newfound coherence and (ii) exacerbate unfair labelling of mercy killers. Ultimately, and more broadly, these difficulties reinforce recent calls for further homicide law reform.

The Structure of Defences in Scots Criminal Law

2003 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-79
Author(s):  
Victor Tadros
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
Academic Literature ◽  
Central Pillar ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Diminished Responsibility

One central pillar of scholarship about criminal defences concerns their structure. Three categories of defence are commonly recognised in the academic literature, and to a degree by the courts: capacity defences, justifications, and excuses. This article considers how defences should be structured and the impact that such a structure has on the content of legally recognised defences such as diminished responsibility, necessity, coercion, and provocation.

scholarly journals Proposed Reforms to Partial Defences and their Implications for Mentally Disordered Defendants

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (17) ◽  
pp. 38
Author(s):  
Andy Bickle
Keyword(s):  
Mental Disorder ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Mentally Disordered ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Mitigating Factors ◽  
The Law ◽  
Homicide Law ◽  
United Kingdom Government ◽  
Partial Defences ◽  
Diminished Responsibility

<p align="LEFT">Partial defences are special defences only available in England &amp; Wales to defendants charged with murder. They include provocation, diminished responsibility, infanticide and killing pursuant to a suicide pact. These are known as the ‘voluntary manslaughters’ where homicide with intent otherwise sufficient for murder (‘malice aforethought’) is reduced to manslaughter because of defined mitigating circumstances. Provocation and diminished responsibility have proved most problematic and will be the focus of this article. The mitigating factors arise from abnormal mental states, and psychiatric evidence has been at the centre of disputes regarding these defences. In this journal, Kerrigan set out recent problems that have developed with provocation in case law. The degree to which mental disorder can be considered when deciding the standard of behaviour required of the defendant who pleads ‘provocation’ has fluctuated markedly in recent years. Diminished responsibility, on the other hand, has aroused concern, inter alia, over its expansive use to cover a wide range of mental conditions, and the frequency with which expert psychiatrists comment on the ‘ultimate issue’ of whether all limbs of the test are met. Both problems might be said to arise from vague terms in the statutory definition that are incompatible with contemporary psychiatric practice.</p><p align="LEFT">Following the controversial case of R v Smith (Morgan James), which permitted mental disorder a much greater effect on provocation, the United Kingdom Government asked the Law Commission to consider and report on the law and practice of the partial defences provided for by the Homicide Act 1957. This progressed to investigation into wider homicide law and a process of consultation and review which has now passed to the Ministry of Justice. This paper will outline briefly the review process before considering in greater detail the current proposals for new definitions of provocation and diminished responsibility. The Commission would like these to exist within a radically re-structured law of homicide. The implications for mentally disordered defendants and therefore expert psychiatric opinion will be considered.</p>

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