Over the years it has been suggested that the criminal law should be codified. This means that murder would be included in new legislation. A criminal code produce in 1989, in which the following definition of murder was as follows:
A person is guilty of murder if he caused the death of another-
a. intending to cause death; or
b. intending to cause serious personal harm and being aware that he may cause death.
This would mean that a defendant who did not intend to kill, but had the intention as describe in b could still be found guilty of murder. This would only happen if the jury were sure that the defendant was aware that his action could cause death. However no such attempt at codifying the criminal law has yet been made. This is probably due to shortage of parliamentary time.
As to what the word ‘intention” actually means, some help is shown in the criminal justice act 1967. Section 8 of this act states that:
A court or jury in determining whether a person has committed an offence:
a. shall not be not be bound in law to infer that he intended or foresaw a result of his actions by reason of its being a natural and probable consequence of those actions, but
b. shall decide whether he did intend or foresee that result by reference to all the evidence, drawing such inferences from the evidence as appear proper in the circumstances.
Again the law commission in its report offences against the person and general principles 1993, proposed that the word ‘intentionally’ should be defined as this:
A person acts intentionally with respect to a result when:
a. it is his purpose to cause it; or
b. although it is not his purpose to cause it, he knows that it would occur in the ordinary course of events if he were to succeed in his purpose of causing some other result.
The introduction of this reform would go a long way to stop confusing situations.
Self defence
The criminal law act 1967, states that a person may use ‘ such force as in reasonable in the circumstances’ in self defence or to prevent a crime being committed. What is reasonable depends on what the defendant honestly and instinctively though the needs of the moment to be. The situation as it stands at the moment therefore is that a person who kills in self-defence, or to prevent a crime, either:
- has complete defence, in which case he is innocent of the charge of his murder; or
- is his use of force is considered to be disproportionate, he is found guilty of murder.
It can be seen therefore that the dividing line between what is reasonable force in the circumstance and what is not determines either complete guilt or compete innocence. This harsh all or nothing situation results in the defendant either walking free from the court or being sentenced to life imprisonment. It is clearly unjust that a person who oversteps the mark of what is reasonable force, usually in a situation of considerable stress, faces a term of life imprisonment.
It has been suggested by the law commission that self-defence might be a partial defence, resulting in a conviction for manslaughter rather than murder. An alternative suggestion was that if the mandatory life sentence were to be abolished then judges would have the discretion to pass suitable sentences in such cases.
Mandatory life sentence
The mandatory life sentence was laid down by the murder act in 1965. The reason being that murder is held to be the most dreadful crimes and deserves the maximum sentence available.
A judge must impose life imprisonment to any person aged 18 or over if they are found guilty of murder.
Objections to the mandatory life sentence are often put forward, however, it is suggested murder is a dreadful crime and deserves to be punished, there is no latitude for the judge to vary the sentence according to the seriousness of the killing. All convictions for murder, of whatever degree of seriousness have the same sentence- life imprisonment.
Another objection to the mandatory life sentence is that in order to avoid it, inappropriate verdicts of manslaughter might be returned. This has happened in the case of so-called ‘mercy killings’, where the defence of diminished responsibility has been accepted on the smallest amount of evidence to avoid a conviction for murder.
Suggestion for the reform of the law in this matter continue to be made. If life imprisonment dose not actually mean for life then why call it life imprisonment and insist on it being passed? One suggestion is to abolish the mandatory life sentence and make it discretionary which basically means the judge has the power to pass any sentence up to and including the maximum sentence available for that crime, depending on the seriousness of the offence.
Another suggestion is that different degrees of murder could be introduce, in thus way the most serious murders would attract a mandatory life sentence and less ones would attract a discretionary life sentence.
When imposing the mandatory life sentence, a judge has the power to recommend that the defendant serves a minimum number of years before being released. He can also recommend that a defendant should never be released; life imprisonment meaning literally for life. By making such recommendations, a judge can reflect the seriousness of the offence. It may be for this reason that no moves have yet been made to abolish the mandatory life sentence.
The potential areas of reform of voluntary manslughter are the two defences to it- provocation and diminished responsibility.
One of the main difficulties with the defence of provocation