What are the criticisms of the current law on Voluntary manslaughter?
Voluntary Manslaughter, set out in the Homicide Act 1957, was established as a substitution for murder in certain circumstances. If there is evidence of Diminished responsibility then murder may be substituted for manslaughter. Diminished responsibility can be a form of insanity an ‘abnormailty of mind’ which is somewhat advantageous if you can prove this, as would be evidence of Provocation, Infanticide or the participation of a Suicide Pact. If the defendant is convicted of Murder, there is a mandatory life sentence and will definitely be imprisoned for a term usually no less than 12 years. However, if convicted of Voluntary Manslaughter, which still embeds the Actus Reus and Mens Rea of Murder, ‘malice aforethought’, and the defendant may be sentenced at the discretion of the Judge. In some cases this has amounted to a full life sentence anyway, but there have also been a few where the defendant has been given a suspended sentence. Aside from this fact, is the current law on voluntary manslaughter satisfactory or is it too readily available as a defence against Murder, making the law too forgiving of serious crime?
The current laws on all types of Homicide were reformed in 1957, but a lot of dispute continued even into the late 1990s as cases using the defence of Provocation increased. The Court of Appeal debated the issue of Provocation with the Privy Council. In cases such as Campbell 1997, Parker 1997 and Smith 1998 the problem arose when comparing the defendant’s action with the reasonable man. The Court of Appeal judged that special characteristics should be taken into consideration, if they are anorexic for example as in Humphreys 1995. Their criticism of the law on the reasonable man was that a person who had some eccentricity shouldn’t be compared with somebody who doesn’t possess the same quality, which in theory is the reasonable man. The Privy Council disagreed and said that the law had gone too far and in Luc Thiet Thuan v R 1996 the Privy Council said that they expected people to show self-control. These arguments amongst the hierarchy of courts showed an inconsistency in the law and so the House of Lords decided to draw the line in Smith-Morgan Jones 2000 when they laid down a few relevant characteristics to be considered. But still said ‘the same standard of behaviour should be expected of everyone’. In one vein this is unfair as it denies individual differences and people’s tolerance levels to provocation differ greatly, but in another vein this shows that a standard of behaviour has been set and that all must follow it which is beneficial as there isn’t an inconsistency.
