Expert Legal Adviser MILTON FIRMAN asks: What is the legal definition of MURDER?

Oct. 18, 2011 - PRLog -- You face a legal problem.  You may have sought advice and felt let down by the system.  Talk of hourly rates and vast fees.  Appointments you have to wait for, and even travel into town.  Delay, uncertainty and worry, lots of worry.  Now Milton Firman turns all of this on its head.

He advises immediately.  He is on call 24/7.  No appointments required.  He will see you at your home.  In the evenings or at weekends.  Fixed fees or no fees at all.  He is fearless and straight talking.  He is an experienced legal adviser, an expert in this field of law and offers advice regarding the best way forward for you.

The crime of murder is committed, where a person:

•of sound mind and discretion (i.e. sane);
•unlawfully kills (i.e. not self-defence or other justified killing);
•any reasonable creature (human being);
•in being (born alive and breathing through its own lungs - Rance v Mid-Downs Health Authority (1991) 1 All ER 801 and AG Ref No 3 of 1994 (1997) 3 All ER 936;
•under the Queen's Peace;
•with intent to kill or cause grievous bodily harm (GBH).
Where the act or omission occurred after 7 June 1996, death no longer needs to follow within a year and a day. Note however that the Attorney General's consent must be obtained before initiating proceedings, if:

1) the injury alleged to have caused the death was sustained more than three years before the death occurred; or
2) the accused has previously been convicted of an offence committed in circumstances alleged to be connected to the death.

As these offences are highly sensitive, and to ensure consistency of approach, all cases in which a homicide prosecution is being considered where either death occurs more than 3 years after the original injury was sustained or after a person has previously been convicted of an offence committed in circumstances connected with the death require the approval of the Director of Public Prosecutions' Principal Legal Advisor prior to the obtaining of the Attorney General's consent.

A British subject can be indicted for murder or manslaughter in England and Wales even when he commits the offence outside the jurisdiction. The nationality of the victim is immaterial: ( Section 9 Offences against the Person Act 1861.)

Murder cannot be committed by a company or other corporation

Intent

For the principal defendant, the intent for murder is the intention to kill or cause grievous bodily harm (GBH), nothing less. Foresight is no more than evidence from which the jury may draw the inference of intent, c.f. R v Woollin [1999] 1 Cr App R 8 (HOL).

In contrast to the offence of murder, attempted murder requires the existence of an intention to kill, not merely to cause grievous bodily harm: R v Grimwood (1962) 3 All ER 285. The requisite intention to kill can be inferred by the circumstances: R v Walker and Hayles (1990) 90 Cr App R 226.

Joint Enterprise

The principle set out in R v Lane and Lane (1986) 82 Cr App R 5 and restated in R v Aston and Mason (1992) 94 Cr App R 180 is that where two people are jointly indicted for the commission of a crime and the evidence does not point to one rather than the other, and there is no evidence that they were acting in concert, the jury ought to acquit both. This equally applies to homicide offences

The prosecution must always show a causal link between the act/omission and the death.

The act or omission must be a substantial cause of death, but it need not be the sole or main cause of death. It must have "more than minimally negligibly or trivially contributed to the death." - Lord Woolf MR in R v HM Coroner for Inner London ex p Douglas-Williams (1998) 1 All ER 344.

It does not matter that the act/omission by the defendant merely "hastened" the victim's death: R v Dyson (1908) 1 Cr App R 13.

However, where it is alleged that an omission was a substantial cause of death, causation is particularly difficult. It is necessary to prove to the criminal standard that but for the omission the deceased would not have died.

To break the "chain of causation" an intervening act must be such that it becomes the sole cause of the victim's death so as to relieve the defendant of liability. (Consider R v Kennedy (2007) 3 W.L.R. 612 below in Cases where death results from the unlawful supply of drugs.)

Examples of intervening acts are:

•Third party interventions: such an act will not break the chain unless it was a free, deliberate, informed, voluntary act, which was not reasonably foreseeable by a reasonable person: R v Pagett (1983) 76 Cr App R 279.

•Acts of God or nature can break the chain if entirely unforeseen and unconnected with the defendant's act.

•An act of the victim will break the chain if not within the range of response which might be anticipated from a victim in his situation: R v Roberts (1972) 56 Cr App R 95 and R v Williams & Davis 1992 CLR 198. Note: Reeves v Metropolitan Police Commissioner (HOL) 2000 1 AC 560 where it was accepted that if the police were aware that the prisoner was a known suicide risk then a special duty of care existed and that Novus actus interveniens did not apply where he then went on to commit suicide.

•Death resulting from any normal medical treatment employed to deal with a criminal injury must be regarded as caused by the criminal injury. It is only in the most extraordinary case that treatment designed to repair the harm done by the original attack could be regarded as the cause of the victim's death to the exclusion of the accused's act: R v Cheshire (1991) 3 All ER 670.

The defendant must take his victim as he finds him under the 'egg-shell skull' rule: R v LeBrun (1991) 4 All ER 673.

Partial defences, are different to complete defences, such as self-defence, as they bear all the ingredients of murder but if successfully argued, reduce the offence to an act of" voluntary manslaughter" not murder.

There are three partial defences to murder: diminished responsibility, loss of control and killing in pursuance of a suicide pact.

In addition there is a so called 'concealed' partial defence, created by legislation in the act of infanticide, see below in this guidance.

Note: Duress is not a defence to a charge of murder or attempted murder.

For more information, here is the deal.  Call Milton on 0161 485 1100 or 07909 900449 at any time or him at milton@miltonfirman.co.uk

Write to him at 24 Byrom Street, Altrincham WA14 2EN.

He will always be pleased to speak to you at any time.  In confidence.  With confidence.

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