Bedder v DPP
| Jurisdiction | UK Non-devolved |
| Judge | Lord Chancellor,Lord Porter,Lord Tucker,Lord Asquith of Bishopstone |
| Judgment Date | 23 July 1954 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1954] UKHL J0723-1 |
| Date | 23 July 1954 |
| Court | House of Lords |
[1954] UKHL J0723-1
House of Lords
Lord Chancellor
Lord Porter
Lord Goddard
Lord Tucker
Lord Asquith of Bishopstone
After hearing Counsel this day, upon the Petition and Appeal of Harry Alec Bedder, praying, That the matter of the Order set forth in the First Schedule thereto, namely, an Order of Her Majesty's Court of Criminal Appeal, of the 21st of June 1954, might be reviewed before Her Majesty the Queen, in Her Court of Parliament, and that the said Order might be reversed, or that the Petitioner might have such other relief in the premises as to Her Majesty the Queen, in Her Court of Parliament, might seem meet; and Counsel appearing for the Respondent, but not being called upon; and due consideration being had this day of what was offered for the said Appellant:
It is Ordered and Adjudged, by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in the Court of Parliament of Her Majesty the Queen assembled, That the said Order of Her Majesty's Court of Criminal Appeal, of the 21st day of June 1954, complained of in the said Appeal, be, and the same is hereby, Affirmed, and that the said Petition and Appeal be, and the same is hereby, dismissed this House.
My Lords,
This appeal raises once more a question of importance in the criminal law. Your Lordships, I think, agree with me that, upon examination, the question appears to be amply covered by the highest authority, but the answer can usefully be re-stated.
The Appellant, a youth of 18 years, was on the 27th May, 1954, convicted at Leicester Assizes of the murder of Doreen Mary Redding, a prostitute. He appealed to the Court of Criminal Appeal on the substantial ground of misdirection, claiming that the learned Judge who tried the case had wrongly directed the jury upon the test of provocation and that, had they been rightly directed, they might have found him guilty not of murder but of manslaughter only. The Court of Criminal Appeal dismissed his appeal, holding that the jury had been rightly directed.
The relevant facts so far as they bear on the question of provocation can be shortly stated. The Appellant has the misfortune to be sexually impotent, a fact which he naturally well knew and, according to his own evidence, had allowed to prey upon his mind. On the night of the crime he saw the prostitute with another man and when they had parted went and spoke to her and was led by her to a quiet court off a street in Leicester. There he attempted in vain to have intercourse with her, whereupon—and I summarise the evidence in the way most favourable to him—she jeered at him and attempted to get away. He tried still to hold her, and then she slapped him in the face and punched him in the stomach: he grabbed her shoulders and pushed her back from him whereat (I use his words), "She kicked me in the privates. Whether it was her knee or foot, I do not know. After that I do not know what happened till she fell." She fell, because he had taken a knife from his pocket and stabbed her with it twice, the second blow inflicting a mortal injury.
It was in these circumstances that the Appellant pleaded that there had been such provocation by the deceased as to reduce the crime from murder to manslaughter, and the question is whether the learned Judge rightly directed the jury upon this issue. In my opinion, the summing up of the learned Judge was impeccable. Adapting the language used in this House in the cases of Mancini and Holmes to which I shall later refer, he thus directed the jury, "Provocation would arise if the conduct of the deceased woman, Mrs. Redding, to the prisoner was such as would cause a reasonable person, and actually caused the person to lose his self-control suddenly and to drive him into such a passion and lack of self-control that he might use violence of the degree and nature which the prisoner used here. The provocation must be such as would reasonably justify the violence used, the use of a knife", and a little later he addressed them thus, "The reasonable person, the ordinary person, is the person you must consider when you are considering the effect which any acts, any conduct, any words, might have to justify the steps which were taken in response thereto, so that an unusually excitable or pugnacious individual, or a drunken one...
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