Re Murphy (Deceased)
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Mr Justice Patten |
| Judgment Date | 16 April 2003 |
| Neutral Citation | [2003] EWHC 796 (Ch) |
| Court | Chancery Division |
| Docket Number | Case No: HC 01C04389 |
| Date | 16 April 2003 |
[2003] EWHC 796 (Ch)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE CHANCERY DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand, London, WC2A 2LL
The Honourable Mr Justice Patten
Case No: HC 01C04389
In The Matter Of The Estate Of Bernard Joseph Murphy Deceased And In The Matter Of The Forfeiture Act 1982
Jonathan Holmes (instructed by Martin Cray & Co.) for the Claimant
Helen Galley (instructed by Griffith Smith Conway) for the Fifth to Eighth Defendants
Hearing dates : 4 th– 7 th March 2003
Approved Judgment
I direct that pursuant to CPR PD 39A para 6.1 no official shorthand note shall be taken of this Judgment and that copies of this version as handed down may be treated as authentic.
Introduction
Either very late on the evening of Saturday 9 th December or in the early hours of Sunday 10 th December 2000, the Claimant Dominic Dalton killed Bernard Murphy by strangling him. He was tried for murder at Lewes Crown Court, but on the sixth day of the trial, following psychiatric evidence, the trial Judge directed the jury to acquit him of murder on grounds of diminished responsibility. He was then convicted on his own plea of manslaughter and sentenced to six years imprisonment.
Apart from a small pecuniary legacy, Mr Dalton was the sole beneficiary of the deceased's estate under a will made in 1996. Under the law as it currently stands, that interest was forfeited under the rule of public policy which precludes those who commit unlawful killings from benefiting from the estates of their victims. The consequences of that rule can, however, be displaced or modified under the provisions of the Forfeiture Act 1982 by an order of the court. But such an order cannot be made unless the court is satisfied that, having regard to the conduct of the offender and of the deceased, and to such other circumstances as appear to the court to be material, the justice of the case requires the rule of policy to be modified.
The latest estate accounts show a cash balance of £36,300. To this must be added the single most valuable asset in the estate, which is Mr Murphy's former home at 15 Crown Street, Brighton. This was given a probate value of £125,000. Mr Dalton is likely to be released from prison at the end of this year. He wishes to resume occupation of 15 Crown Street, which he says has been his home since about 1987, apart from a break of about 2 to 3 years in the 1990's. His application for relief from forfeiture is opposed by members of Mr Murphy's family, only some of whom stand to benefit financially on an intestacy. Their evidence has been that they would feel affronted if the person who killed a well-loved brother and uncle were to benefit from his estate. At the end of the hearing, and with the agreement of both sides, I gave my decision and refused relief from forfeiture. I now give my reasons for that decision.
The Forfeiture Rule
The forfeiture rule is defined by s.1(1) of the Forfeiture Act 1982 ("the 1982 Act") as "the rule of public policy which in certain circumstances precludes a person who has unlawfully killed another from acquiring a benefit in consequence of the killing". As those words indicate, the rule is of wide application in cases of unlawful killing. It is not limited to cases of murder, but applies also to manslaughter and to cases of assisted suicide. It is sometimes described as a rule which prevents the killer from profiting from his crime, but it is important to observe that it is not limited to cases in which the motive for, or purpose of, the killing was to obtain the benefit on death.
In Re Crippen [1911] P. 108, Sir Samuel Evans P refused a grant of letters of administration in respect of Mrs Crippen's estate to the personal representatives of her husband, who by then had been tried and executed for her murder. The President stated that:
"It is clear that the law is, that no person can obtain, or enforce, any rights resulting to him from his own crime, neither can his representative, claiming under him, obtain or enforce any such rights. The human mind revolts at the very idea that any other doctrine could be possible in our system of jurisprudence."
In Re Hall [1914] P 1, the Court of Appeal confirmed that the rule applied equally to cases of involuntary manslaughter. Hamilton LJ expressed the view that to distinguish between murder and manslaughter in such cases would be:
"to encourage what, I am sure, would be very noxious —a sentimental speculation as to the motives and degree of moral guilt of a person who has been justly convicted and sent to prison".
This led Sir John Pennycuick V-C, in Re Giles [1972] Ch 544, to reject any attempt to limit the common law rule to cases involving real moral culpability. The case was one in which a wife had killed her husband with a single blow to the head and was convicted of manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility. She was found to be suffering from a form of mental illness and was sent to Broadmoor under a hospital order made under s.60 of the Mental Health Act 1959. At page 552 of his judgment the Vice-Chancellor said this:
"In the present case, the widow was convicted pursuant to section 2 of the Homicide Act 1957 of manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility. It is contended, on her behalf, that such a conviction does not fall within the general principle laid down in the cases to which I have referred. On the face of it, it seems to me that such a conviction does plainly fall within the scope of that principle. The principle is, to use a summary expression of Lord Atkin in the Beresford case [1938] A.C. 586, 599 that the 'courts will not recognise a benefit accruing to a criminal from his crime'. It is accepted that a person convicted of manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility has indeed been convicted of a crime. Therefore, on the face of it, such a person in the present connection is in precisely the same position as anyone who was convicted of manslaughter under the law as it stood before the introduction of the Homicide Act 1957. And the cases have established beyond question that a person so convicted of manslaughter is disqualified from taking a benefit under the will or intestacy of the person whom he has killed.
Mr Whitehead for the widow, has sought to exclude these cases of manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility from the scope of the principle. What he contends is that the principle, only applies to crime deserving of punishment or, to use another phrase, crime carrying a degree of moral culpability, and that where the crime does not deserve punishment and carries no degree of moral culpability, then the principle does not apply. It is true that sentence of detention for hospital treatment under section 60 of the Mental Health Act 1959 is not in the nature of a punishment but is a remedial order. The answer, certainly in this court, is that neither the deserving of punishment nor carrying a degree of moral culpability has ever been a necessary ingredient of the crime the perpetrator of which is disqualified from benefiting under the will or intestacy of the person whom he has killed. That is an entirely new conception and it is actually contrary to the words used by Hamilton LJ in In re Hall [1914] P.1, 7."
A similar approach was taken by Vinelott J in Re K, decd [1985] Ch 85,where a wife had pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of her husband. In that case relief was granted to the wife under s.2(2) of the 1982 Act and upheld on appeal ( [1986] Ch 180), but the learned Judge held that the forfeiture rule did apply, notwithstanding that the killing occurred when a shotgun was discharged during a quarrel in which the husband had used physical violence towards his wife. Both these decisions are consistent with the judgment of the Court of Appeal in Gray v. Barr [1971] 2 QB 554, where it was held that a husband who accidentally shot and killed his wife's lover after threatening him with a shotgun was not liable to be indemnified by his insurers for the losses claimed against him by the deceased's estate as a result of the shooting. However, in the course of his judgment (at page 581) Salmon LJ said this:
"Although public policy is rightly regarded as an unruly steed which should be cautiously ridden, I am confident that public policy undoubtedly requires that no one who threatens unlawful violence with a loaded gun should be allowed to enforce a claim for indemnity against any liability he may incur as a result of having so acted. I do not intend to lay down any wider proposition. In particular, I am not deciding that a man who has committed manslaughter would, in any circumstances, be prevented from enforcing a contract of indemnity in respect of any liability he may have incurred for causing death or from inheriting under a will or upon the intestacy of anyone whom he has killed. Manslaughter is a crime which varies infinitely in its seriousness. It may come very near to murder or amount to little more than inadvertence, although in the latter class of case the jury only rarely convicts. Hall's case [1914] P. 1 may seem to be an authority for the proposition that anyone who has committed manslaughter, in any circumstances, is necessarily under the same disability as if he had committed murder. The facts however are not stated in the report and they are of vital importance in order to understand the decision. They have now been ascertained from the record A man named Julian Hall kept a woman named Jeannie Baxter and had made a will in her favour. They had had many quarrels. He had promised to marry her but had not done so. On April 13, 1913, she took his revolver...
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