R v Acott
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | LORD JUSTICE RUSSELL |
| Judgment Date | 05 April 1996 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1996] EWCA Crim J0308-3 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) |
| Date | 05 April 1996 |
| Docket Number | No: 95/3868/W4 |
[1996] EWCA Crim J0308-3
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL CRIMINAL DIVISION
Before: Lord Justice Russell Mrs Justice Bracewell and The Recorder of Newcastle (Acting as a Judge of the Court of Appeal)
No: 95/3868/W4
MR T LANGDALE QC appeared on behalf of the Applicant
Friday 8th March 1996
This is a renewed application for leave to appeal against conviction after refusal by the Single Judge.
On 23rd May 1995 in the Crown Court at Stafford before His Honour Judge Taylor and a jury, the applicant was convicted of his wife's murder and sentenced to the mandatory term of life imprisonment.
The facts were as follows. The applicant had married his wife when the couple were in their twenties, in 1990, the marriage being an arranged one. The applicant and his wife both were Sikh by religion. They came to the United Kingdom shortly afterwards, and a son was born in September 1991. Unhappily thereafter it seems relations between the applicant and his wife deteriorated and there was more than one separation.
However, on the night of 3rd/4th July 1994 the couple were living together, though on this occasion there were violent quarrels which ultimately led to the killing. The wife expressed her dissatisfaction with life and, in particular, threatened to leave the applicant, taking the child with her. He believed (the parties at the time being in bed together) that the applicant had simply temporarily left the bedroom, but he discovered that in fact she had left the matrimonial home, wrapped only in a towel, and had run in the direction of the applicant's parents' home, nearby. The applicant, clad only in a pair of shorts, gave chase. He had plainly at this stage lost his temper, because when he arrived at the home of his parents, his mother came out of the house carrying a ceremonial sword. She tried to ward off the applicant using that weapon, but he wrestled the sword from her grasp and, first, thrust it into his mother's arm and thereafter into the victim, who was standing close by and was subjected to an appalling attack. She had, as was demonstrated at the post-mortem examination, a number of indications of violence together with two stab wounds to the base of her neck.
When interviewed the applicant acknowledged that he was responsible for the killing and he told the police that he had become very angry as a consequence of events that had occurred during the preceding hour or so prior to the killing.
At trial Mr. Timothy Langdale QC sought to introduce into the case and to call as a witness a consultant psychiatrist, whose report we have amongst our papers. He was Dr. F E Winton. The judge, when rejecting the application for leave to call psychiatric evidence, confirmed that which is apparent from the subsequent summing-up, namely that the case was run by the Crown on the basis that there was an abundance of evidence that the applicant had in fact been provoked on the fatal night and had indeed lost his self-control. The jury were reminded by the judge that the evidence was all one way and that the prosecution had opened the case on the basis that there had been provocative conduct and that the applicant had lost his self-control. The vital question was that posed...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
R v Van Dongen (Anthony Gerrard); R v Van Dongen (Mitchell)
...from which the jury could find that there was provoking conduct which resulted in the defendant losing his self-control – see for instance R v Acott [1997] 2 Cr. App. R 5 In the present case, Mr Dein QC, on behalf of Mitchell van Dongen, invited the judge to direct the jury as to provocati......
-
Tabeel Lewis v The State
...when it should have been, the consequences, are either English or Privy Council cases. They include the decision of the House of Lords in R v Acott [1997] 1 WLR 306 where, in the single reasoned speech, Lord Steyn said this, at pp 312-313: "Section 3 is only applicable 'if there is evidenc......
-
Mohammed Ali bin Johari v Public Prosecutor
... ... be noted that, even under s 3 of the 1957 Act, if there was “merely the speculative possibility that there had been an act of provocation”, it would be wrong of the judge to direct the jury to consider the defence of provocation (see, for example, the House of Lords decision of Regina v Acott [1997] 2 Cr App R 94 at 102). Viewed in this light, all that Doughty decides is that the trial judge in that case was wrong in not adhering to the position (just stated) which was the result of the introduction of s 3 of the 1957 Act and had erred in deciding, as a question of law, that the ... ...
- R v Clinton (1), Parker (2) and Evans (3)
-
Loss of Self-Control as a Defence: The Key to Replacing Provocation
...it was altered bythe 1957 Act.17 This has been a current theme with provocation. For13 Rv Cox [1995] 2 Cr App R 513.14 R v Acott [1996] 4 All ER 443; Rv Miao [2003] EWCA Crim 3486.15 [1992] 1 All ER 326 at 333.16 R v Miao [2003] EWCA Crim 3486.17 See Ministry of Justice, Summary of Response......