The Assizes
| DOI | 10.1177/002201835602000403 |
| Published date | 01 October 1956 |
| Date | 01 October 1956 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
The
Assizes
CONSTRUCTIVE MURDER
THE discussion by Parliament of
the
question of capital
punishment
and
of
the
law relating to the elements of
the
crime of
murder
was foreshadowed by a
number
of viewpoints
expressed in various publications.
The
Conservative
and
Unionist Society of the
Inns
of Court came out in favour of
areform in the law relating to constructive murder.
There
were lately in East Lancashire two cases which illustrated
the
position. Ashworth J. tried one Bancroft at Manchester
in December 1955.
The
victim was a child a few months old
whom the accused had struck in a fit of anger.
He
was found
guilty
and
his appeal failed,
but
he was reprieved on
the
eve of
execution.
This
was known to be to the relief of the victim's
family as well as of his own.
They
were neighbours and, as
the
accused had young children of his own, they did not hesi-
tate to ask him to
mind
their baby.
The
battering he in fact
gave
the
child was in itself a crime,
and
death resulting there-
from was accordingly murder.
The
necessary intention could
be inferred from an excessive use of force,
but
according to an
ordinary common sense aspect of
the
matter it was most
unlikely
that
Bancroft intended the child's death. His self-
control was probably short of
that
which is traditionally
expected.
'The
case of
R.
v. Miller was tried at
the
same assizes, when
the
jury
disagreed,
and
subsequently it was heard at Liverpool
before Lynskey J. where averdict of manslaughter was re-
turned.
This
was a case where an elderly man, stepfather of the
accused, was beaten by him after falling in a fight.
The
boy's
mother, in some way the occasion of
the
fight, had fainted,
and
other witnesses could only say
that
they heard asound "like
the
bouncing of a ball".
The
deceased's violence
under
the
influence of drink had caused
the
mother to send the boy away
to a Blue Coat school soon after the marriage.
There
he had
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