Diminished Responsibility and Acute Intoxication: Raising the Bar?
| Published date | 01 June 2012 |
| DOI | 10.1350/1740-5580-76.3.197 |
| Date | 01 June 2012 |
| Subject Matter | Court of Appeal |
envy and proprietorialness are more readily associated with stalking and
the obsessed stalker who may or may not have had a prior relationship
with the victim (Memorandum from Jeremy Horder to the House of
Commons above). It appears paradoxical to exclude the former case
automatically whilst leaving the latter to be considered by the trial
judge.
The recent Independent Parliamentary Inquiry into Stalking Law
Reform concluded that stalking is becoming increasingly common, par-
ticularly with the growth in use of social network sites (L. Richards,
H. Fletcher and D. Jewell, Independent Parliamentary Inquiry into Stalking
Law Reform. Main Findings and Recommendations (2012), available at http:
//www.protectionagainststalking.org/InquiryReportFinal.pdf, accessed 8 April
2012). Despite this, the sexual infidelity exclusion fails to extend to cases
like that of R v Stingel (1990) 171 CLR 312, where an envious stalker
stabbed his former girlfriend’s new paramour, because such cases do not
include any form of sexual infidelity (referred to in the judgment of the
present case at [18]). Nevertheless, defendants like Stingel will remain
ineligible to claim the loss of control defence since the trial judge has the
authority to remove pleas predicated on possessiveness and jealousy
from jury consideration (Law Commission, Partial Defences to Murder, Cm
290 (2004) para. 3.150; R v Smith (Morgan) [2001] 1 AC 146 at 169). In
this regard, the sexual infidelity prohibition is superfluous since the loss
of control defence will only be left to the jury if sufficient evidence is
raised in relation to the defence which, in the opinion of the trial judge,
a properly directed jury could reasonably conclude that the defence
might apply. Despite the confusing rationale, the controversial exclusion
remains part of the loss of control defence. Nevertheless, the present
ruling indicates that the prohibition will rarely be invoked since it is
unlikely that sexual infidelity will be raised in isolation from other
factors.
Nicola Wake
Diminished Responsibility and Acute Intoxication:
Raising the Bar?
R v Dowds (Stephen Andrew) [2012] EWCA Crim 281
Keywords
Acute intoxication; Diminished responsibility; Murder; Man-
slaughter; Recognised medical condition
Over the weekend of 19–21 November 2010, Dowds (D) fatally stabbed
his partner after having consumed vast quantities of alcohol. According
to his evidence, both were habitual binge drinkers and there had been a
long history of violence between them, mostly initiated by her, and
usually when one or both had been drinking. The facts suggest that the
fatal argument took place in the early hours of Saturday 20 November
because the victim made an interrupted 999 call at that time. On the
197
The Journal of Criminal Law
evening of Sunday, 21 November, D telephoned the police to report that
his partner was dead. D asserted that he had no recollection of the events
which led to the death of the victim, but he did not dispute that he must
have been responsible for her wounds.
At his trial for murder, the jury were required to consider whether, in
light of the intoxication, D had been capable of forming the requisite
intention to kill or cause serious bodily harm. The trial judge also left the
loss of control defence, under ss 54–56 of the Coroners and Justice Act
2009 (‘the 2009 Act’), to the jury. Section 54(1)(a) and (7) of the 2009
Act reduces a conviction of murder to one of voluntary manslaughter
where the defendant kills subject to a loss of control; the loss of control
must be attributable to at least one of two qualifying triggers. The first
qualifying trigger is satisfied by a thing said or things done or said (or
both), which constituted circumstances of an extremely grave character,
and caused D to have a justifiable sense of being seriously wronged (the
‘seriously wronged’ trigger). The second qualifying trigger requires D to
fear serious violence from V against D or another...
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