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Criticisms of Murder and Voluntary Mansalughter

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Law Homework – Reforms of Murder and Voluntary Manslaughter
My criticisms of Murder and Voluntary Manslaughter
Murder
Murder is the most serious form of unlawful homicide. Murder is a common law offence, and has never been defined by statute. The most commonly accepted definition is the one given by the early 17th century judge, Sir Edward Coke. He defined murder as: ‘The unlawful killing of a reasonable person in being under the Queens peace with malice aforethought, express or implied.’’ The actus reus of murder is the ‘unlawful killing.’ Some killings are recognised by the law as being justified. For example a person who kills in self-defence or in the prevention of a crime, provided that the force used was reasonable in the …show more content…

where the defendant fears serious violence. 2. When certain things have been said or done which amount to circumstances of an extremely grave character, and cause he defendant to have a justifiable sense of being seriously wronged 3. When a combination of the first two situation applies. A criticism of this is that I believe the second point is extremely subjective to each individual as some-one calling me useless may not affect me as much as It would some-one else and although there are factors to be considered for the defence of things being said such as would another person of the same age and sex of the defendant, the same level of tolerance and self-restraint act in the same way if they was in the defendants circumstance however they are not the defendant and the defendant would have had completely different life experience to anyone else in that court room which made him so sensitive to what happened and I think everyone has their own little qualifying triggers that could potentially make you lose your self-control that no one else would understand. As a reform to this I would suggest that the court room ask the defendant to justly preach to the court room as to WHY he lost that self-control, WHY what the victim said to him meant so much to him and WHY he feels to act in that way, I’d also say that there could be guidelines set out as to how grave a situation has to be for it be considered ‘loss of self-control’

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