Involuntary Manslaughter

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Unlawful Act Manslaughter

Also known as constructive manslaughter

Kennedy No. 2(above)

Lord Bingham’s 3 core elements of unlawful act manslaughter:

1. D voluntarily committed an unlawful act

2. The unlawful act was a dangerous crime

3. The unlawful act was a significant cause of death

The mens rea for the unlawful act will constitute the actus reus of the UAM

Criminal unlawful act:

Larkin suggests criminal standard of unlawful act

R v Lamb

Held: definition of assault is the immediate apprehension of personal violence & here the mistake meant there could be no apprehension – without the mens rea & actus reus of the unlawful act you cannot have unlawful act manslaughter

‘Dangerous’:

R v Church (above)

• Edmund Davies LJ: the unlawful action must be dangerous, which means that a sober and reasonable person would consider the act capable of causing V some harm. The is an OBJECTIVE standard

DPP v Newbury

Two 15 yo Ds threw paving slab off railway bridge which killed a train driver, V

Held: (HL) no necessity of subjective foresight needed for harm; a normative standard of foreseeable harm resulting from dangerous criminal act – didn’t actually identify the unlawful act however

R v JF and NE

Teen Ds set fire to a duvet which asphyxiated a sleeping homeless man V

Held: (CA) dismissing the appeal based on a misdirection including foreseeability & intention, that if anything the trial judge had been too generous to Ds in including a subjective element of risk awareness in constituting arson as an unlawful act for manslaughter – normative assessment of dangerous needed only – unfairness borne of this must be changed by Parliament

R v Andrews

Injection of insulin – strict liability offence under Medicines Act – leading to death

Held: an unlawful act may be a strict liability offence. The scope does not, however, extend to tortious acts per Andrews v DPP

R v Lowe

Neglect of child V caused death

Held: an unlawful act cannot be an omission

Kennedy No. 2(above): Lord Bingham’s critique of the lower courts’ failure to identify the relevant unlawful act. Supply was not, of itself, a dangerous act. Joint administration was.

R v Dawson

D used force in a robbery of a petrol station & V died from a heart attack

Held: the type of harm foreseeable must be physical harm not emotional disturbance – D was not aware of the risk to V – convictions quashed – obiter that foreseeable emotional shock might be capable of amounting to physical harm if it was extreme enough to the reasonable man

R v Watson

Burglary of V, an elderly man, which lasted 1.5 hrs causing his distress such that he died from a heart attack

Held: the unlawful act continued throughout the burglary and didn’t end at the threshold. The reasonable man was in the position of D who had become aware of the risk to V in this case

R v Carey (above): where public affray was not enough because a reasonably bystander would not have considered it dangerous

HOWEVER R v JM and SM where public affray was considered prima facie dangerous enough where it creates shock which is physically harmful

Causation

(see general principles)

R v Goodfellow

D was harassed in his council house and so set it alight to make it look as if it had been petrol bombed so he could be relocated. His wife, son & son’s gf died

Held: the unlawful act did not have to be aimed at V as long as there was no novus actus causing death

Williams & Davis (above): a novus actus for an unlawful act means it was outside the ambit of reasonable responses

AG Ref No. 3 of 1994 (above): unlawful act not aimed at foetus but caused its death once a human being

R v Dhaliwal (above): suicide as a potentially unintervening event

Gross Negligence Manslaughter

• Glenys Williams: difficulties of GNM:

  • Causation with...

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