R v Camplin
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | LORD JUSTICE BRIDGE |
| Judgment Date | 25 July 1977 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1977] EWCA Crim J0725-2 |
| Docket Number | No. 670/B/77 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) |
| Date | 25 July 1977 |
[1977] EWCA Crim J0725-2
Lord Justice Bridge
Mr. Justice Willis
and
Mr. Justice Crichton
No. 670/B/77
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL
CRIMINAL DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
MR. G. BAKER, Q. C. and MR. J. STEWART appeared on behalf of the Appellant.
MR. B. MORTIMER, Q. C. and MR. P. CHARLESWORTH appeared on behalf of the crown.
This is an appeal by leave of the full Court, granted today in the course of the argument, against the appellant's conviction at Leeds Crown Court after a trial before Mr. Justice Boreham and a jury, on 14th January of this year, of the murder of one Mohammed Lal Khan. Being at the date of conviction 16 years of age, the appellant was ordered to be detained during Her Majesty's pleasure.
It is unnecessary, in view of the course the Court proposes to take, and having regard to the nature of the only issue arising on the appeal which it is necessary to determine, to go at any length into the facts of the case. The victim of the crime was a Pakistani labourer, who lived alone in a flat in Halifax. His age was unknown, but he was probably in his fifties. He died from two heavy blows to the head with a kitchen utensil referred to as a "chapati pan", something like a rimless frying pan, which split his skull wide open. There was no dispute that the blows were struck by the appellant. On arraignment he tended a plea of guilty to manslaughter on the footing that, on any view, this was an unlawful killing but for obvious reasons this was not acceptable to the prosecution and a trial for murder proceeded. The sole issue which was canvassed by the defence was the issue of provocation.
The background was that Khan was a practising homosexual. He had for some time been having homosexual relations with a friend of the appellant, a boy referred to at the trial as "Jumbo". The appellant had come to know of this relationship, and had – this was common ground – over a period of months been blackmailing Khan for small sums of money by threatening to report his homosexual offences to the police.
On the day of the killing, which was 26th September 1976, the appellant, having had a certain amount to drink, went to Khan's flat. Exactly what happened of course only Khan and the appellant could say. As subsequently became apparent from the undisputed evidence of forensic scientists, it is clear that an act of buggery by Khan upon the appellant was committed.
After the attack with the chapati pan, the appellant left the premises, telephoned a friend and complained that Khan had made a homosexual attack of some sort upon him. He subsequently visited a number of public houses and obviously had a good deal too much to drink. Some hours after the killing, he telephoned a police station and said that he thought that he had killed somebody. He told the police where he was to be found. The police came and picked him up. He was then taken to the police station and interrogated at length. He finished by making a written statement.
The burden of what he said, both in answers to the questions and in his written statement, was that he had asked Khan for money, repeating his former threat that if money was not forthcoming he would report his homosexual activity with Jumbo to the police. Khan refused to give him any money. In due course he lost his temper, and, as he put it in his written statement, he decided to put an end to Khan's homosexual activities. At that stage he made no reference to any homosexual activity between himself and Khan. At that time the forensic examination of swabs, clothing and so forth, which subsequently demonstrated that there had been such homosexual activity, was not known to the police officers carrying out the interrogation.
At the trial the defence of provocation, which was advanced, rested upon the evidence of the appellant, not only that he had been buggered by Khan, but that this had been a forcible act against his will, that he had at first resisted, but had given up his resistance after a certain stage for fear that Khan would use a knife upon him. After the event he had been overcome with shame and when he had heard Khan laughing over his sexual triumph, he had lost his self-control and attacked him with the chapati pan.
As already stated, this appellant was, at the date of his conviction, only 16 and at the date of the killing of Khan he was only 15 years of age. In his final speech to the jury Mr. Baker for the defence naturally addressed the jury as to the matters they would have to consider in applying themselves to the two questions requiring consideration when a defence of provocation, reducing murder to manslaughter, is raised: first, had the appellant been so provoked as to be deprived of his self-control; and secondly, would a reasonable person in the appellant's circumstances, subjected to the same provocation, have acted as the appellant did.
In relation to that second question, Mr. Baker, in terms or by necessary implication, had suggested to the jury that their approach should be to ask how a reasonable boy of the appellant's age would have reacted in the circumstances established by the evidence to have occurred at Khan's flat on the fatal day. Perhaps unfortunately the question whether or not that suggestion was well founded, was not canvassed in the absence of the jury by argument of counsel for the assistance of the learned Judge.
When he came to sum up, the learned Judge had to deal with the submission of Mr. Baker and clearly had decided that it was ill-founded and that the jury should be so directed. In relation to this matter what he said was: "Provocation, therefore consists of these matters: either things said, or things done, or a combination of the two, which, in your judgment, have, or may have, had two effects ……… Secondly, that the provocation was sufficient to make a reasonable man in like circumstances act as the defendant did. Not a reasonable boy, as Mr. Baker would have it, or a reasonable lad; it is an objective test - a reasonable man.
"Members of the Jury, I cannot define that person to you. I think in many ways he is like the elephant - he is very difficult to define, but he is very easily recognised. In fact, you twelve ladies and gentlemen collectively represent the reasonable man; that is why that must be the test. You could not, and nor could I, judge a reasonable boy; it is the reasonable man, and have no doubt about it."
Accordingly, it is abundantly clear that the learned Judge was telling the jury in terms that the criterion to be applied in deciding whether a reasonable man would have reacted to whatever provocation the jury found established by evidence in the way that the appellant did, was a man of full age and maturity. The sole issue which we have to decide in this appeal is whether that was a correct or incorrect direction.
The law on this subject, of course, is now enshrined in statute, section 3 of the Homicide Act 1957, which provides: "Where on a charge of murder there is evidence on which the jury can find that the person charged was provoked (whether by things done or by things said or by both together) to lose his self-control, the question whether the provocation was enough to make a reasonable man do as he did shall be left to be determined by the jury; and in determining that question the jury shall take into account everything both done and said according to the effect which, in their opinion, it would have on a reasonable man."
That section, as is well known, made certain important changes in the law. But Mr. Baker submits that in relation to the concept of a "reasonable man", it made no change and that we still have to look, to see the limits of that concept, at the pre-existing common law. Mr. Baker submits that "reasonable man" under the common law and statute means "reasonable person". One has to ask whether a reasonable person, placed in the objective circumstances in which the defendant was placed, would have reacted as the defendant did. In essence the question is whether the age of the defendant, where the defendant is very young, is itself one of the objective circumstances to be imputed to the notional reasonable man whom the jury are to consider, or...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
R v R (Stephen Malcolm)
...in law because he failed to apply the law in relation to what constitutes the "ordinary prudent man" and failed adequately to consider D.P.P. v. Camplin (1978) 67 Cr.App.R.14. He should have found that the ordinary prudent man is synonymous with the reasonable man and therefore the jury sho......
-
R v Morhall
... ... Yet none of these addictions or propensities could sensibly be regarded as consistent with the reasonable man. It is to be noted, and we emphasise, that section 3 refers to 'a reasonable man', not just to a person with the self-control of a reasonable man. Whilst Reg. v. Camplin [1978] A.C. 705 decided that the 'reasonable man' should be invested with the defendant's characteristics, they surely cannot include characteristics repugnant to the concept of the reasonable man. Quite apart from the incongruity of regarding glue, or drug addiction, or paedophilia, as ... ...
-
R v Smith (Morgan James)
...He accurately directed the jury as to the provisions of section 3 of the Homicide Act 1957 and passages in the speech of Lord Diplock in Camplin. But when he came to direct the jury on the objective as opposed the subjective requirement for provocation he said: "Assume for the fact that h......
-
Holley v AG
...first being considered and determined by a Single Judge. Authorities Homicide (Jersey) Law, 1986: Article 4. Homicide Act 1957: s.3. R. v Camplin [1978] AC 705 HL(E). Luc Thiet Thuan v R. (1996) 2 All ER 1033; [1997] AC 131 P.C. Ashworth: ‘The Doctrine of Provocation’ [1976] CLJ 292 at 3......
-
Loss of Self-Control as a Defence: The Key to Replacing Provocation
...element rather than having to try and deem it as acharacteristic by internalising it as some kind of syndrome or characterflaw.35 [1978] QB 254 at 258.36 [2000] UKHL 49, [2000] 4 All ER 289.37 [2005] UKPC 23, [2005] 3 All ER 371. See S. Edwards, ‘Justice Devlin’s Legacy:Duffy—A Battered Wo......