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Homicide Act 1957
The Homicide Act 1957 (5 & 6 Eliz.2 c.11) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It was enacted as a partial reform of the common law offence of murder in English law by abolishing the doctrine of constructive malice (except in limited circumstances), reforming the partial defence of provocation, and by introducing the partial defences of diminished responsibility and suicide pact. It restricted the use of the death penalty for murder. Similar provisions to Part I of this Act was enacted for Northern Ireland by Part II of the Criminal Justice Act (Northern Ireland) 1966. History The Act was introduced following the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment 1949–53, and embodied some of its recommendations but differed from the main recommendation which was that "it is impracticable to find a satisfactory method of limiting the scope of capital punishment by dividing murder into degrees". During and after the royal commission there had been several controversial ca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Assent
Royal assent is the method by which a monarch formally approves an act of the legislature, either directly or through an official acting on the monarch's behalf. In some jurisdictions, royal assent is equivalent to promulgation, while in others that is a separate step. Under a modern constitutional monarchy, royal assent is considered little more than a formality. Even in nations such as the United Kingdom, Norway, the Netherlands, Liechtenstein and Monaco which still, in theory, permit their monarch to withhold assent to laws, the monarch almost never does so, except in a dire political emergency or on advice of government. While the power to veto by withholding royal assent was once exercised often by European monarchs, such an occurrence has been very rare since the eighteenth century. Royal assent is typically associated with elaborate ceremony. In the United Kingdom the Sovereign may appear personally in the House of Lords or may appoint Lords Commissioners, who announce ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Malice Aforethought
Malice aforethought is the "premeditation" or "predetermination" (with malice (law), malice) required as an element of some crimes in some jurisdictions and a unique element for first-degree or aggravation (law), aggravated murder in a few. Insofar as the term is still in use, it has a technical meaning that has changed substantially over time. Etymology Malice aforethought is a direct translation of the Law French term ''malice prépensée'', so the adjective follows the noun as in French. Legal history Malice aforethought was not an element of murder in early medieval English law cases. Both self-defence killings and death by misadventure were treated as murder by juries. Although pardons for self-defence became common after the Statute of Gloucester was passed in 1278, the jury in a 14th-century case still found that a self-defence killing was felonious. In the 12th century, any death by misadventure without a "presentment of Englishry" was sufficient for a jury finding of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Automatism (case Law)
In criminal law, automatism is a rarely used criminal defence. It is one of the mental condition defences that relate to the mental state of the defendant. Automatism can be seen variously as lack of voluntariness, lack of culpability (unconsciousness) or excuse. Automatism means that the defendant was not aware of his or her actions when making the particular movements that constituted the illegal act. For example, Esther Griggs in 1858 threw her child out of a first floor window believing that the house was on fire, while having a sleep terror. In 2002, Peter Buck, lead guitarist of the band R.E.M., was cleared of several charges, including assault, which resulted from automatism brought on by a bad interaction between alcohol and sleeping pills. In a 2009 case in Aberporth in west Wales, Brian Thomas strangled his wife in their camper van, also during a sleep terror, when he mistook his wife for an intruder. The defence of automatism is denying that the person was acting in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Automatism (law)
In criminal law, automatism is a rarely used criminal defence. It is one of the mental condition defences that relate to the mental state of the defendant. Automatism can be seen variously as lack of voluntariness, lack of culpability (unconsciousness) or excuse. Automatism means that the defendant was not aware of his or her actions when making the particular movements that constituted the illegal act. For example, Esther Griggs in 1858 threw her child out of a first floor window believing that the house was on fire, while having a sleep terror. In 2002, Peter Buck, lead guitarist of the band R.E.M., was cleared of several charges, including assault, which resulted from automatism brought on by a bad interaction between alcohol and sleeping pills. In a 2009 case in Aberporth in west Wales, Brian Thomas strangled his wife in their camper van, also during a sleep terror, when he mistook his wife for an intruder. The defence of automatism is denying that the person was acting ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Legal Burden Of Proof
In a legal dispute, one party has the burden of proof to show that they are correct, while the other party had no such burden and is presumed to be correct. The burden of proof requires a party to produce evidence to establish the truth of facts needed to satisfy all the required legal elements of the dispute. The burden of proof is usually on the person who brings a claim in a dispute. It is often associated with the Latin maxim ''semper necessitas probandi incumbit ei qui agit'', a translation of which is: "the necessity of proof always lies with the person who lays charges." In civil suits, for example, the plaintiff bears the burden of proof that the defendant's action or inaction caused injury to the plaintiff, and the defendant bears the burden of proving an affirmative defense. The burden of proof is on the prosecutor for criminal cases, and the defendant is presumed innocent. If the claimant fails to discharge the burden of proof to prove their case, the claim will be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Omission (criminal Law)
In law, an omission is a failure to act, which generally attracts different legal consequences from positive conduct. In the criminal law, an omission will constitute an '' actus reus'' and give rise to liability only when the law imposes a duty to act and the defendant is in breach of that duty. In tort law, similarly, liability will be imposed for an omission only exceptionally, when it can be established that the defendant was under a duty to act or duty of care. Criminal law In the criminal law, at common law, there was no general duty of care owed to fellow citizens. The traditional view was encapsulated in the example of watching a person drown in shallow water and making no rescue effort, where commentators borrowed the line, "Thou shalt not kill but needst not strive, officiously, to keep another alive." ( Arthur Hugh Clough (1819–1861)) in support of the proposition that the failure to act does not attract criminal liability. Nevertheless, such failures might be mora ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Criminal Law Act 1967
The Criminal Law Act 1967 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that made some major changes to English criminal law, as part of wider liberal reforms by the Labour government elected in 1966. Most of it is still in force. Territorial scope Although it is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, most of its provisions (except for some minor exceptions) apply only to England and Wales. Several of the Act's provisions were adopted, word for word, for Northern Ireland by the Criminal Law Act (Northern Ireland) 1967 (c 18) (NI) and the Criminal Justice (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act (Northern Ireland) 1968 (c 28) (NI). The Republic of Ireland similarly adopted some of its provisions, again word for word, in the Criminal Law Act 1997. Structure The Act has three parts. Part I abolished the distinction between felony and misdemeanour and makes consequential provisions. Part II abolished a number of obsolete crimes. Part III contains supplementary provision ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Culpability
In criminal law, culpability, or being culpable, is a measure of the degree to which an agent, such as a person, can be held morally or legally responsible for action and inaction. It has been noted that the word, culpability, "ordinarily has normative force, for in nonlegal English, a person is culpable only if he is justly to blame for his conduct". Culpability therefore marks the dividing line between moral evil, like murder, for which someone may be held legally responsible, and a randomly occurring event, like naturally occurring earthquakes or naturally arriving meteorites, for which no human can be held responsible. Etymology Culpability descends from the Latin concept of fault ('' culpa''). Concept The concept of culpability is intimately tied up with notions of agency, freedom, and free will. All are commonly held to be necessary, but not sufficient, conditions for culpability. In law From a legal perspective, culpability describes the degree of one's ''blamew ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grievous Bodily Harm
Grievous bodily harm (often abbreviated to GBH) is a term used in English criminal law to describe the severest forms of battery. It refers to two offences that are created by sections 18 and 20 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861. The distinction between these two sections is the requirement of specific intent for section 18; the offence under section 18 is variously referred to as "wounding with intent" or "causing grievous bodily harm with intent",Archbold Criminal Pleading, Evidence and Practice, 1999, paragraph 19-201 at page 1614 whereas the offence under section 20 is variously referred to as "unlawful wounding", "malicious wounding" or "inflicting grievous bodily harm". Statute Section 18 This section now reads: The words omitted in the first to third places specifically included shooting or attempting to shoot, and included some words considered redundant; they were repealed by section 10(2) of, and Part III of Schedule 3 to, the Criminal Law Act 1967. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Intention In English Law
In English criminal law, intention is one of the types of '' mens rea'' (Latin for "guilty mind") that, when accompanied by an '' actus reus'' (Latin for "guilty act"), constitutes a crime. The standard definitions Judges normally do not define ''intention'' for juries, and the weight of authority is to give it its current meaning in every day language as directed by the House of Lords in ''R v Moloney'', where can be found references to a number of definitions of ''intention'' using subjective and objective tests, and knowledge of consequences of actions or omissions. Intention is generally defined in terms of foresight of particular consequences and a desire to act or fail to act so that those consequences occur. It is distinguished from recklessness because, on a subjective basis, there is foresight but no desire to produce the consequences. But the perennial problem has always been the extent to which the court can impute sufficient desire to convert recklessness into inte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Burglary
Burglary, also called breaking and entering and sometimes housebreaking, is the act of entering a building or other areas without permission, with the intention of committing a criminal offence. Usually that offence is theft, robbery or murder, but most jurisdictions include others within the ambit of burglary. To commit burglary is to ''burgle'', a term back-formed from the word ''burglar'', or to ''burglarize''. Etymology Sir Edward Coke (1552–1634) explains at the start of Chapter 14 in the third part of ''Institutes of the Lawes of England'' (pub. 1644), that the word ''Burglar'' ("''or the person that committeth burglary''"), is derived from the words ''burgh'' and ''laron'', meaning ''house-thieves''. A note indicates he relies on the ''Brooke's case'' for this definition. According to one textbook, the etymology originates from Anglo-Saxon or Old English, one of the Germanic languages. (Perhaps paraphrasing Sir Edward Coke:) "The word ''burglar'' comes from the two Ge ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
