Done to Death? Reform of Homicide Law

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyd Sally
Keyword(s):  
Homicide Law

6. Homicide 1: murder

2020 ◽  
pp. 227-247
Author(s):  
Janet Loveless ◽  
Mischa Allen ◽  
Caroline Derry
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Mens Rea ◽  
Court Decisions ◽  
Life Sentence ◽  
Actus Reus ◽  
Homicide Law ◽  
Mandatory Sentence

This chapter, which examines homicide law in Great Britain, focusing on murder, explains that the term homicide includes the offences of murder and manslaughter and can also be used to refer to other forms of statutory offences of killing. It clarifies that murder refers to intentional killings while manslaughter concerns unintentional killings, and discusses actus reus and mens rea elements of murder. The chapter discusses the sentence for murder under the Criminal Justice Act 2003 and comments on the justification for mandatory life sentence. It also reviews the most recent proposals for reform of murder and the mandatory sentence, and analyses court decisions in relevant cases.

6. Homicide 1: murder

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janet Loveless ◽  
Mischa Allen ◽  
Caroline Derry
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Mens Rea ◽  
Court Decisions ◽  
Life Sentence ◽  
Actus Reus ◽  
Homicide Law ◽  
Mandatory Sentence

This chapter, which examines homicide law in Great Britain, focusing on murder, explains that the term homicide includes the offences of murder and manslaughter and can also be used to refer to other forms of statutory offences of killing. It clarifies that murder refers to intentional killings while manslaughter concerns unintentional killings, and discusses actus reus and mens rea elements of murder. The chapter discusses the sentence for murder under the Criminal Justice Act 2003 and comments on the justification for mandatory life sentence. It also reviews the most recent proposals for reform of murder and the mandatory sentence, and analyses court decisions in relevant cases.

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.

Athenian Homicide Law in the Age of the Orators. Douglas M. MacDowell

1966 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 282-282
Author(s):  
Alfred P. Dorjahn
Keyword(s):  
Homicide Law

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.

scholarly journals WHEN SEXUAL INFIDELITY TRIGGERS MURDER: EXAMINING THE IMPACT OF HOMICIDE LAW REFORM ON JUDICIAL ATTITUDES IN SENTENCING

2015 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 307-328 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Horder ◽  
Kate Fitz-Gibbon
Keyword(s):  
Case Law ◽  
Law Reform ◽  
Loss Of Control ◽  
Sexual Infidelity ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Key Features ◽  
Homicide Law ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Substantive Law ◽  
The Impact

AbstractIn October 2010, the UK Parliament brought into effect law that replaced the partial defence to murder of provocation with a new partial defence of “loss of control”, applicable to England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Although it retained some key features of its controversial predecessor, the new partial defence was in part designed better to address the gendered contexts within which a large number of homicides are committed. In examining the impact of the reforms, we will focus on long-held concerns about the treatment of sexual infidelity as a trigger for loss of control in murder cases. The article undertakes an analysis of English case law to evaluate the way in which sexual infidelity-related evidence has influenced perceptions of a homicide defendant's culpability, for the purposes of sentencing, both before and after the implementation of reform. The analysis reveals that, in sentencing offenders post reform, the higher courts have failed to follow the spirit of the reforms respecting the substantive law by effecting a corresponding change in sentencing practice.

Drakon and Early Athenian Homicide Law

1982 ◽  
Vol 87 (4) ◽  
pp. 1057
Author(s):  
W. R. Connor ◽  
Michael Gagarin
Keyword(s):  
Homicide Law
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