First Scenario Regarding Angus Liability For Sophia's Death

The first part of this essay will discuss the first scenario regarding Angus’s liability for Sophia’s death. The point of law that must be resolved to establish this is whether Angus fulfilled the two elements required to be liable for murder. A defendant (D) must have committed the physical act, Actus Reus (AR) with the accompanying ‘mentes reae’, Mens Rea (MR).

The AR and MR of murder summarises its definition. The AR of murder is the unlawful killing of another human being. Cunningham and Moloney established the MR is an intention to ‘kill or cause grievous bodily harm’ (GBH) or ‘really serious’ harm with malice aforethought or intention.

Intention is split into direct and oblique intention. Moloney recognised that in cases of

Angus did not directly intend Sophia’s death, only to kidnap Sophia to claim the money. However, Angus has an oblique intention to kill or cause GBH to Sophia even if it wasn’t his primary purpose. Sophia’s death was a virtually certain consequence of Angus failing to tell the police where she was and would be foreseeable to the reasonable man. Sophia told Angus that if she did not get the insulin it would cause ‘brain damage or death’ even Angus thought it would be a miracle if she was still alive. Therefore, Angus must have appreciated the risk. The AR is Angus kidnapping Sophia, which legally caused Sophia’s death because ‘but for’ him doing this and failing to tell the police where she was, Sophia would not have died. This contributed significantly to Sophia’s death even if the sole cause was a lack of insulin (legal causation).

To conclude, Angus obliquely intended Sophia’s death and factually and legally caused her death. Therefore, MR and AR are present and Angus is liable for murder.

The second scenario is based on David threatening Veronica causing her to jump out of a window. Veronica died, however David only intended to cause bruising. This part of the essay will discuss David’s liability for unlawful act manslaughter

Secondly, the unlawful act must be objectively dangerous, Church applied the objective test based on would a ‘sober and reasonable man’ have foreseen the risk of some psychical harm. If yes, then Newbury confirmed this is sufficient enough, even if D did not realise his act was dangerous or unlawful, this was approved in Savage. JM and SM reaffirmed that UAM only requires a foreseeable risk of causing ‘some harm’ not necessarily death. Lastly, D must factually and legally cause death as shown in Pagett. The requirements for each causation is outlined above in scenario one. However, the chain of causation could be broken by a Novus actus interveniens such as ‘escape cases’. Roberts established that a victim’s (V) escape from a threat of D could break the chain of causation if the escape was so daft that no reasonable person would foresee it. In Marjoram, V jumping out of a window was