#14654 - Involuntary Manslaughter - GDL Criminal Law

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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 omissions based liability

  • Certainty as to where a duty will arise (especially re: drug offences)

  • Intervening acts of equal force as UAM

• J C Smith: no authoritative category of duties owed

The absence of prima facie unlawful activity, but the presence of dangerous activity so much so that it makes it criminal

Pre-Adomako it appeared that ‘reckless manslaughter’ was the offence, governed by Caldwell recklessness. Adomako (above) established GNM (1 – duty of care, 2 – breach, 3 – causation, 4 - was conduct enough to be classed as a criminal act/omission)

R v S

D shot gun at the mother of his gf to try to scare her but missed and hit V, his gf

Held: (CA) GNM – duty emerged from the creation of a dangerous situation and not taking any steps to minimise the risk. Negligence is not a subjective test, but an objective test taking into account D’s sex & age

Adomako adopted the Bateman test of criminal negligence -> is the conduct so bad that is goes beyond compensation & deserves punishment by the state. This involves overt disregard for human life

Volenti:

R v Wacker

D lorry driver smuggling in Chinese immigrants who died in his lorry because he closed the air vent. Charged GNM – argued that there was no duty & V assumption of risk

Held: emphasised that tortious principles are not always squared with criminal ones as criminal public policy is about protection of life – volenti could not go to exculpate D’s liability here

R v Willoughby

D set fire to premises for insurance & killed V, their accomplice in the fire

Held: following Wacker, that volenti was inappropriate in the criminal context

R v Bowler

D invited V, a man called ‘bondagekent’ whom he had met on a gay chatroom, to his house to engage in some mummification. He left holes in the cellophane. D went to sleep, came back and checked on him, then left him for 3 hours. On return V was dead from a heart attack & overheating

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