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R v Church [1966] 1 QB 59

By Oxbridge Law TeamUpdated 04/01/2024 07:03

Judgement for the case R v Church

KEY POINTS

  • Even if the accused never intended to cause death or grievous bodily harm, It is stated that manslaughter is committed when another person is killed as a result of an unlawful act of violence committed intentionally against that person.

  • The commission of an unlawful act does not automatically result in a conviction of manslaughter. It is only considered to be manslaughter when all reasonable individuals would foresee that the unlawful act would expose the victim to at least some danger of injury as a result of it. 

  • This can also be seen as an extension of the thin skull rule, if the accused commits an act in which, predictably, some damage will occur, he cannot reasonably claim that the specific injury he caused was not foreseeable.

  • The rule established in R v Thabo Meli [1954] in the case of manslaughter was that:

Mens rea need not exactly coincide with the act causing death if the act is part of a connected series of acts,  which at some point of time coincided with the mens rea.

FACTS

  • The Victim and Church were together in a vehicle, for sexual purposes. A brawl broke out after the victim began mocking him. He knocked the victim down cold. After failing to rouse her, he panicked, assumed the victim was dead, and dumped her into the river. The victim's severely wounded body was discovered in the River Ouse, and drowning was declared to be the cause of death.

  • Church was found guilty of manslaughter and was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment however he appealed this conviction. 

  • Church contended that the basis for his guilty decision could neither be criminal negligence because the trial judge had simply directed the jury on recklessness, nor provocation because it was insufficient based on the circumstances. As a result, the only possible ground for manslaughter was that the death was caused by an unlawful act.

  • Church argued that a substantial miscarriage of justice had taken place when he was accused of manslaughter, he stated that the jury was misdirected when they were instructed that whether the accused sincerely and honestly believed the body was dead at the time of immersion was irrelevant to the offense of manslaughter. He insisted that mens rea is an essential ingredient of manslaughter.

COMMENTARY

  • The Court upheld the decision of the trial judge of convicting Church of Manslaughter. The trial judge did mislead the jury by saying that it was irrelevant whether Church believed the victim had died when he threw her into the river, however, despite the error in judgment, there wasn’t a significant miscarriage of justice, as Church would have been found guilty of manslaughter, regardless of whether he knew the victim was dead or not when he threw her down the river. 

  •  An unlawful act that causes the death of another person does not automatically result in a manslaughter conviction. For such a judgment to follow inexorably, the unlawful act must be such that all sober and reasonable individuals would unavoidably realize that the act would expose the other person to at least the risk of some injury if not grievous harm. 

ORIGINAL ANALYSIS

  • A man hit a woman and, thinking that he had killed her, threw her into the River Ouse where she drowned.

  • He was convicted of manslaughter and appealed against this.

  • However his appeal was dismissed since, despite misdirection of judge that it did not matter whether the man thought the woman to be dead when he threw her over the bridge (it had to be reckless). 

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