{"id":532,"date":"2008-05-04T17:12:59","date_gmt":"2008-05-04T16:12:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/?p=532"},"modified":"2008-05-04T17:12:59","modified_gmt":"2008-05-04T16:12:59","slug":"again-the-court-of-appeal-asks-for-reform-of-law-of-murder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/?p=532","title":{"rendered":"Again, the Court of Appeal asks for reform of law of murder"},"content":{"rendered":"

R v Diamond<\/em> [2008] CA<\/strong>
\n [Reform of murder and associated defences]<\/strong>
\nThis case is of interest because the Court of Appeal quoted Professor Sir John Smith<\/strong> in his commentary on R v Criminal Cases Review Commission ex p Pearson at <\/strong><\/em>[1999] Crim LR 731<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

“A striking feature of the cases reviewed is that so many of them involve prosecutions for murder where, subsequently, the appellant has sought to adduce fresh evidence to support a defence, not raised at the trial, of provocation or diminished responsibility. The present law invites this problem. An accused is entitled to put the prosecution to proof of the whole of its case but it is not practical for him to raise alternative defences as is–or used to be–possible in civil proceedings: “I did not kill him; but, if I did, it was in self defence, or, if not in self defence, under provocation–or at least diminished responsibility”. Naturally the accused will go for a complete acquittal if he thinks there is any possibility of it which may preclude him from raising other, perhaps more plausible, defences. The courts have almost fallen over backwards in discerning evidence of defences not expressly raised or even disclaimed in order to ensure that justice is done, but there are limits and this will be a continuing problem for the courts and the Commission. There is a solution. The abolition of the mandatory penalty for murder could, and I now believe, should, carry with it the abolition of the defences of provocation and diminished responsibility. The rest of the law of offences against the person has many serious imperfections but the absence of these defences is not one of them. The matters to which they relate can be dealt with perfectly well at the sentencing stage. Unfortunately, as debates on the mandatory penalty in Parliament have demonstrated, this is a subject on which emotion and prejudice, not reason, prevail.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

R v Diamond [2008] CA [Reform of murder and associated defences] This case is of interest because the Court of Appeal quoted Professor Sir John Smith in his commentary on R v Criminal Cases Review Commission ex p Pearson at [1999] Crim LR 731: “A striking feature of the cases reviewed is that so many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}