Who Is Criminally Liable For David's Death

Criminal Law MOD008466 Element 010-2.

R v Alice Alice and David have been married for six years. About a year ago, they began having some complications regarding David’s workplace. Due to developing an alcohol addiction, he became violent towards his wife physically and verbally. Alice developed depression along with symptoms specific to this mental impairment. On the night of the incident, David comes home and asks Alice to give him money to feed his addiction. Being refused by his wife, he starts acting violently and verbally, wronging Alice. When David was sleeping, Alice went into the kitchen, picked up a weapon and stabbed David ten times. Emergency units were alerted and David was taken by the paramedics who dropped David on the floor while he

The question now is whether Alice is criminally liable or not for the death of David. The main reason for David’s death was the ten stabs applying the “but for” test, making Alice liable for voluntary manslaughter. Voluntary manslaughter happens when D intends to kill or cause grievous bodily harm but is not guilty of murder due to loss of control or diminished responsibility. In Alice’s case, voluntary manslaughter under the loss of control would be the liability she would be facing. The following legal authorities are relevant to her case: The Homicide Act 1957, s.3 has modified the defence of provocation at common law, allowing a defence to murder (but a conviction to manslaughter) if D was provoked, suffered a sudden and temporary loss of self-control and provocation was enough to objectively make a “reasonable” person do what D did. The Coroners and Justice Act 2009 arose due to a large number of cases in which women, who were subject to abuse, murdered their husbands, being unable to prove “a sudden and temporary” loss of control. This “slow burn” to a loss of control, as most claim, has become essentially a psychiatric condition known as “battered woman syndrome”. R v