Ever since I am at a tender young age, crime has always intrigued me. Be it glamourous, or fascinating; crime never fails to draw interests, feelings and comments as well as hatred and spite from the general public every time a murder/rape case is splashed on the newspaper headlines. Some cases turned out to be more gory, brutal and vicious/maliciously-fueled than others. The topic is also made wildly popular by television drama series which portray the glamourous side of it. But truth to speak, there is more than meets-the-eye.
Fraud, Arson, Homicides(Murdur, Voluntary Manslaughter, Involuntary Manslaughter, Gross Negligence Manslaughter), Battery, Grievous Bodily Harm, Suicides, Rape has always been factors which trigger images in our minds before we even speak of them.
According to my research, the knife is always a weapon of passion. Many-a-times do we see someone being stabbed not once….but multiple times. And this causes the person to lie on the road, bleeding profusely. Imagine a blade, being thrusted deep into your flesh(or maybe through your tendons, muscles and bones); and then being pulled out of your body just to have a second stab and then multiple stabs over.
Crime is usually dissolved into various components, which are namely
1. the modus operandi of how it is created
2. the intention of the parties involved
3. whether they could have reasonably foresaw a secondary act by the victim
4. chains of causation(continuous, operating and substantial) etc and whether are there any breakage in the links of causation(novus actus interveniens)
5. whether does the act of a third party(s) is so overwhelming that it cause the initial assault/attack to merely be the setting for a larger outcome.
As you will see in following cases, certain acts will really distinguish themselves from others. eg. in the case of R v Dudley and Stephens and Re A (conjoined Twins).
R v Dudley and Stephens is an old precedent case whereby starving shipwrecked sailors decided to kill a dying boy, Parker: so as to eat him. It create a ratio decidendi whereby necessity is not a defence for murder. Prosecution was started in S’pore but ultimately dropped after extended procedural wrangles as to whether Singapore or England was the most appropriate jurisdiction. Yann Martel for the best-selling novel “Life of Pi” picked up on the basis of this case, surmising “So many Richard Parkers had to mean something”, and included a shipwrecked Bengal tiger called “Richard Parker” in the book. Of course it attracts loads of controversy….eg. how you know whether you will kill another shipmate/crewmate for the sake of survival until you are really put into his/her shoes? People kill in desperation…in North Korea whereby there is a period of widespread famine…human beings eat the dead bodies of other human beings just to survive. Taking the live of another just to preserve one’s own.
But if we take a look it from a different angle, the law is fair in that it only sentence the defendants to six months imprisonment. Based on my detailed analogy, what it actually means is that “the sentencing of six months is not too long and just nice, it was fair so as to act as a minor deterrent to the public not to commit a positive act to kill a person even in times of desperation. But yet at the same time it is being fair to the defendants as the sentence was not too long, so as to protect those in dire situations. The sentencing is just to satisfy the public that we have a fair judiciary system so people cannot use desperate situations to commit murder but yet also protect those who have no other outlets and avenues so survive except to kill“. Thus the law is fair on both sides.
However in another controversial case that draws alot of criticism is the case of Re A Conjoined Twins 2001 whereby it raised moral and ethical questions on whether it is permissible to kill one child to save another. The theory of “the lesser evil”. Notable archaic cases such as Dudley and Stephens as well as Airedale NHS Trust v Bland were brought up. And the “concept of necessity“. Both the twins were joined at the pelvis. The medical evidence indicated that Jodie was the stronger sibling who was sustaining the life of Mary through a shared common artery that enabled her sister Jodie. Surgical separation was needed if not both twins will eventually die before they were one year old. But if this was done, Jodie could live but Mary would die.
It is a general principle of criminal law that a person may not be convicted of a crime unless the prosecution have proved beyond reasonable doubt both
(a) that he/she has caused a certain event or that responsibility is to be attributed to him/her for the existence of certain state of affairs, which is forbidden by criminal law and
(b) the defendant had a defined state of mind in relation to (a)
Who can commit a criminal offence then? Only someone with the legal capacity to commit a criminal offence can be the subject of a conviction. THerefore babies are definitely excluded…how about an older child who steals from a shop? So far when children is concerned, there is an irrebuttable presumption that a child under the age of 10 is incapable of committing a criminal offence.Once a child reaches the age of ten, they are deemed capable of committing an offence and can be subject to criminal trials.
(Until 1998, there was a criminal law doctrine of doli incapax, which means a child age ten to fourteen is not capable of committting a crime. But this doctrine was abolished by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998)
Another example of legal incapacity is the defence of insanity. Where a person is charged with an offence and can demonstrate on balance of probabilities that they were insane at the time of perpetuated wrongdoing, then the verdict will be “not guilty by reason of insanity”. However this has to be medically proven, and evidence is taken into consideration as well.
Different sections of various statutes accomodate to different crimes.
Say Section 170 (4) Road Traffic Act 1988 makes it an offence to fail to report a road traffic accident.
Section 6 makes it an offence to fail to provide breath specimen.
Section 1(2)(a) Children and Young Persons Act makes it an offence to fail to maintain a child.
Section 17 (1)(a) Theft Act 1968 makes it an offence to omit a material particular from an account or document.
Then comes to omission liabilities where murder can also be caused by ommission. Surprise surprise 🙂 Society usually thinks that murder is a positive act….How can it be caused by omission? (R v Gibbins and Proctor).
Most cases will fall under manslaughter unless deliberately withheld something that the victim needs(eg. food) while at the same time, being able to reasonably foresee the future consequences: death from starvation.
Omissions attract liability when:
1. there is a duty of care imposed by law
2. there is a wilful breach of such duty of care
3. such breach causes prohibited criminal result.
GBH(Grievous bodily harm) can also be caused by omissions. s18 Offences Against The Persons Act 1861. But note that s18 uses the term “cause” but s20 uses the word “inflict”.
The extent of keeping patients alive through euthanasia cases also brought about much debates in the twenty-first century,
Cases like:
not being allowed to die equals to unlawful trespass(Ms B v An NHS Hospital)
positive act of lethal injection is wrong (R v Cox)
illegal to actively bring a patient’s life to an end. But lawful for doctors to let patients die if it is not active (Airedale case) Euthanasia. PVS( Persistent Vegetative State)
drunk-driving cases:
to prove that “total loss of control”. But what if the excuse is cannot control the car properly when driving? This is not an excuse. An excuse is only when there is total lost of control. Not sub-control or being able to control at certain points of the drive.
Even sleeping at certain points of drive and awoke at certain points is not an excuse because at certain points whereby the defendant is awakened, she is driving too.
Prior fault such as not having enough sleep or drink before driving are also taken into consideration.
Lastly I want to end on a high note. Comparing notable overseas cases of R v Jordan and R v Smith.
In R v Jordan, the stab wound had penetrated the intestine in two places according to medical witnesses. But it mainly has already healed at the time of death. But death of the victim is caused by allergic to the drug terramycin. Thus, the defendant is not charged of homicide as the victim’s death is caused by terramycin because(at the time when it was administered, the wounds of the victims from the first assault has already healed). The treatment in the opinion of doctors was palpably wrong.
But in R v Smith, though after the victim is assaulted, the victim is carried by buddy and dropped two times on the floor coupled with the medical doctor’s negligence. But in this case, the wounds did not heal yet. Thus although there are three breakage in the chains of causation( two drops + medical negligence) ; the original wound is still an operating and substantial cause. If this is the case at the time of death, then the death can properly be said to be the result of the wound even though some other cause of death is also operating. Only if it can be said that the original wounding is merely the setting in which another cause operates, can it be said that the death does not result from the wound.
This was furthered in R v Cheshire 1991 whereby even though negligence in the treatment was the immediate cause of death, it will not exclude the responsibility of the accused unless the negligent treatment was so independent of the accused’s act and in itself is so potent in causing death, that the contribution made by the accused act became insignificant.
and R v Malcharek(continuing, operating and substantial).
Extra notes:
Theft is the dishonest disappropriation of property belonging to others with the intention of permanently depriving others of it.
Therefore in conclusion…crimes comes in many ways. Unique and varied as they may be. And every factor and piece of evidence is taken into consideration, which will in turn affect the outcome of the verdict.
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