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R V Sullivan
''R v Sullivan'' 984AC 156 is a British House of Lords case in criminal law, and a leading modern authority on the common law defence of insanity. Facts The defendant, who had had epilepsy since childhood, kicked the victim, his friend, during an epileptic seizure while he was sitting in his neighbour's flat on 8 May 1981. Upon recovery, the defendant only remembered the incident where he was standing by a window with the victim lying on the floor with head injuries. The defendant was charged with assault. The trial judge ruled that the evidence that the defendant had had a post-epileptic seizure would amount to a disease of the mind, not that of automatism. Judgment The House of Lords held that epilepsy was a disease of the mind due to the defendant's impaired mental faculties causing defect in reasoning. Lord Diplock stated that {{blockquote, "The evidence as to the pathology of a seizure due to psychomotor epilepsy can be sufficiently stated for the purposes of this appe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
House Of Lords
The House of Lords, also known as the House of Peers, is the Bicameralism, upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Membership is by Life peer, appointment, Hereditary peer, heredity or Lords Spiritual, official function. Like the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster in London, England. The House of Lords scrutinises Bill (law), bills that have been approved by the House of Commons. It regularly reviews and amends bills from the Commons. While it is unable to prevent bills passing into law, except in certain limited circumstances, it can delay bills and force the Commons to reconsider their decisions. In this capacity, the House of Lords acts as a check on the more powerful House of Commons that is independent of the electoral process. While members of the Lords may also take on roles as government ministers, high-ranking officials such as cabinet ministers are usually drawn from the Commons. The House of Lo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lord Diplock
William John Kenneth Diplock, Baron Diplock, (8 December 1907 – 14 October 1985) was a British barrister and judge who served as a lord of appeal in ordinary between 1968 and until his death in 1985. Appointed to the English High Court in 1956 and the Court of Appeal five years later, Diplock made important contributions to the development of constitutional and public law as well as many other legal fields. A frequent choice for governmental inquiries, he is also remembered for proposing the creation of the eponymous juryless Diplock courts. Of him, Lord Rawlinson of Ewell wrote that "to his generation Diplock was the quintessential man of the law". Early life and legal career Kenneth Diplock was born in South Croydon, the son of solicitor William John Hubert Diplock and his wife Christine Joan Diplock, ''née'' Brooke. He was educated at Whitgift School in Croydon and University College, Oxford, where he read chemistry and graduated with a second-class degree in 1929. H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Insanity Defense
The insanity defense, also known as the mental disorder defense, is an affirmative defense by excuse in a criminal case, arguing that the defendant is not responsible for their actions due to an episodic psychiatric disease at the time of the criminal act. This is contrasted with an excuse of provocation, in which the defendant is responsible, but the responsibility is lessened due to a temporary mental state.''Criminal Law - Cases and Materials'', 7th ed. 2012, Wolters Kluwer Law & Business; John Kaplan, Robert Weisberg, Guyora Binder, , It is also contrasted with a finding that a defendant cannot stand trial in a criminal case because a mental disease prevents them from effectively assisting counsel, from a civil finding in trusts and estates where a will is nullified because it was made when a mental disorder prevented a testator from recognizing the natural objects of their bounty, and from involuntary civil commitment to a mental institution, when anyone is found to be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Criminal Law
Criminal law is the body of law that relates to crime. It prescribes conduct perceived as threatening, harmful, or otherwise endangering to the property, health, safety, and moral welfare of people inclusive of one's self. Most criminal law is established by statute, which is to say that the laws are enacted by a legislature. Criminal law includes the punishment and rehabilitation of people who violate such laws. Criminal law varies according to jurisdiction, and differs from civil law, where emphasis is more on dispute resolution and victim compensation, rather than on punishment or rehabilitation. Criminal procedure is a formalized official activity that authenticates the fact of commission of a crime and authorizes punitive or rehabilitative treatment of the offender. History The first civilizations generally did not distinguish between civil law and criminal law. The first written codes of law were designed by the Sumerians. Around 2100–2050 BC Ur-Nammu, the N ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epilepsy
Epilepsy is a group of non-communicable neurological disorders characterized by recurrent epileptic seizures. Epileptic seizures can vary from brief and nearly undetectable periods to long periods of vigorous shaking due to abnormal electrical activity in the brain. These episodes can result in physical injuries, either directly such as broken bones or through causing accidents. In epilepsy, seizures tend to recur and may have no immediate underlying cause. Isolated seizures that are provoked by a specific cause such as poisoning are not deemed to represent epilepsy. People with epilepsy may be treated differently in various areas of the world and experience varying degrees of social stigma due to the alarming nature of their symptoms. The underlying mechanism of epileptic seizures is excessive and abnormal neuronal activity in the cortex of the brain which can be observed in the electroencephalogram (EEG) of an individual. The reason this occurs in most cases of epilepsy is u ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epileptic Seizure
An epileptic seizure, informally known as a seizure, is a period of symptoms due to abnormally excessive or synchronous neuronal activity in the brain. Outward effects vary from uncontrolled shaking movements involving much of the body with loss of consciousness ( tonic-clonic seizure), to shaking movements involving only part of the body with variable levels of consciousness ( focal seizure), to a subtle momentary loss of awareness (absence seizure). Most of the time these episodes last less than two minutes and it takes some time to return to normal. Loss of bladder control may occur. Seizures may be provoked and unprovoked. Provoked seizures are due to a temporary event such as low blood sugar, alcohol withdrawal, abusing alcohol together with prescription medication, low blood sodium, fever, brain infection, or concussion. Unprovoked seizures occur without a known or fixable cause such that ongoing seizures are likely. Unprovoked seizures may be exacerbated by stress or ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Assault
An assault is the act of committing physical harm or unwanted physical contact upon a person or, in some specific legal definitions, a threat or attempt to commit such an action. It is both a crime and a tort and, therefore, may result in criminal prosecution, civil liability, or both. Generally, the common law definition is the same in criminal and tort law. Traditionally, common law legal systems have separate definitions for assault and battery. When this distinction is observed, battery refers to the actual bodily contact, whereas assault refers to a credible threat or attempt to cause battery. Some jurisdictions combined the two offences into a single crime called "assault and battery", which then became widely referred to as "assault". The result is that in many of these jurisdictions, assault has taken on a definition that is more in line with the traditional definition of battery. The legal systems of civil law and Scots law have never distinguished assault from batte ... [...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] |
Criminal Defenses
In the field of criminal law, there are a variety of conditions that will tend to negate elements of a crime (particularly the ''intent'' element), known as defenses. The label may be apt in jurisdictions where the ''accused'' may be assigned some ''burden'' before a tribunal. However, in many jurisdictions, the entire burden to prove a crime is on the ''prosecution'', which also must prove the ''absence'' of these defenses, where implicated. In other words, in many jurisdictions the absence of these so-called defenses is treated as an element of the crime. So-called defenses may provide partial or total refuge from punishment. Types of defenses in a Court of Law Mental disorder (insanity) Insanity or ''mental disorder'' (Australia and Canada), may negate the ''intent'' of any crime, although it pertains only to those crimes having an ''intent'' element. A variety of rules have been advanced to define what, precisely, constitutes criminal ''insanity''. The most common definitio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
House Of Lords Cases
A house is a single-unit residential building. It may range in complexity from a rudimentary hut to a complex structure of wood, masonry, concrete or other material, outfitted with plumbing, electrical, and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems.Schoenauer, Norbert (2000). ''6,000 Years of Housing'' (rev. ed.) (New York: W.W. Norton & Company). Houses use a range of different roofing systems to keep precipitation such as rain from getting into the dwelling space. Houses may have doors or locks to secure the dwelling space and protect its inhabitants and contents from burglars or other trespassers. Most conventional modern houses in Western cultures will contain one or more bedrooms and bathrooms, a kitchen or cooking area, and a living room. A house may have a separate dining room, or the eating area may be integrated into another room. Some large houses in North America have a recreation room. In traditional agriculture-oriented societies, domestic animals such a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
