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BCL Law Notes Medical Law and Ethics Notes

Murder Notes

Updated Murder Notes

Medical Law and Ethics Notes

Medical Law and Ethics

Approximately 82 pages

A guide to some of the key topics in the BCL course on Medical Law and Ethics.

This features numerous academic positions, case summaries, arguments and up-to-date statistics pertinent to some of the substantial topics in this module (eg. abortion, autonomy, medical negligence)...

The following is a more accessible plain text extract of the PDF sample above, taken from our Medical Law and Ethics Notes. Due to the challenges of extracting text from PDFs, it will have odd formatting:

MURDER AND SUICIDE

WHAT’S NEEDED FOR A CONVICTION?

  1. Doctor can be convicted for murder where jury persuaded beyond all reasonable doubt that doctor:

  1. caused patient’s death (or was a substantial cause R v Cheshire);

  2. intended to cause death or GBH; and

  3. has no defence

  1. Adams – Devlon J said if doctor only shortens life by weeks/months it’s treated the same as if shortened by years

MANSLAUGHTER

  1. where health care professional acts in an extremely negligent way

DEFENCES

  1. DIMINISHED RESPONSIBILITY

  1. normally where someone caring for terminally ill suffers from exhaustion and stress

  2. only a partial defence = still manslaughter

  1. LOSS OF CONTROL

  2. SUICIDE PACT

  3. SELF-DEFENCE

a) Re A – conjoined twins case

MERCY KILLING

  1. Very rare brought to court, only where CPS believes it’s in the public interest

  2. Home Office Stats for 1982-1991 inclusive reveal only 24 cases brought with only 1 resulting in a murder conviction – 16 got manslaughter but 3 went to prison

DOCTORS?

  1. Smith – unlikely that doctors following sound medical practice would be convicted

  2. R v Arthur – Farquharson J told the jury to think ‘long and hard’ before finding a doctor guilty

  3. R v Moor (Hooper J) – ‘You may consider it a great irony that a doctor who goes out of his way to care for [a patient] ends up facing the charge that he does’

SUICIDE

NOT A CRIME

  1. It used to be punishable by capital punishment, but suicide is no longer a crime

  2. Keown – this doesn’t mean we have the right to...

Buy the full version of these notes or essay plans and more in our Medical Law and Ethics Notes.