Legal Studies

Mental Illness has been prevalent all throughout our history from Isaac Newton to Abraham Lincoln to Sylvia Plath and so on. These illnesses can be as minor as a slight bipolar disorder or as severe as schizophrenia. In recent years, mental illnesses are becoming more prevalent in our criminal justice systems than anywhere else. Mental illness is becoming an association with crime and based on the information that has been found, this paper will attempt to further define the problem of mental illness within our criminal justice system and offer alternatives or insights as to how to possibly help with this problem.

The criminal justice system plays a fundamental role in achieving justice, as the system aims to protect all members of the community fairly and equally. However, in the criminal case of R v Loveridge, it is evident that the justice system fails to apply the law to equally balance the needs of the victims and the community. In this case, the offender Kieran Loveridge pleaded guilty to five counts of offences; three charges of common assault, one charge of assault occasioning actual bodily harm and one charge of manslaughter by an unlawful and dangerous act, the victim being Thomas Kelly, Loveridge received 4 years’ non-parole for manslaughter, Loveridge’s total effective sentence therefore is 7 years and 2 months with an effective

Currently if a D aged 18 or over is convicted of murder, the judge must pass a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment. For offenders aged 10-17 found guilty of murder, the judge must order that they are detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure. The fact the sentencing is mandatory and the judge has no discretion leaves a lack of ability to sentence according to blameworthiness, unlike all other offences which have discretion in sentencing; Gotts. This lack of differentiation between blameworthiness is further emphasised by the Government’s sentencing guidelines laid down in the Criminal Justice Act 2003. Under this act in cases of murders of police officers or murders involving firearms D should receive a 30 year sentence. However, in cases like that of Martin (Anthony) such a sentence would appear unjust.

The Act intends to answer the needs of increased severity in punishment regarding the one punch hits. In order to successfully apply this, the Act proposes amendments to the Sentencing Act that would impose mandatory minimum sentences for ‘one punch’ manslaughter cases in circumstances where an offender knew that the victim was not expecting the punch or strike, and died as a result of the blow. The bill alters the Sentencing Act to accommodate a statutory least non-parole period sentence of 10 years for homicide including horrible brutality and murder by single punch or strike where the Director of Public Prosecutions has pulled out to the court of an aim to look for the burden of the statutory least sentence if the charged is discovered liable and where extraordinary circumstances, as accommodated in the bill, don 't exist.

-There was a reckless lack of interest or concern to human life, resulting in death. (an example of this is a person unloads a firearm in a crowded street.

The defence of provocation is quickly being eroded in Australian law in several different ways on a state to state basis. The defence of provocation allows perpetrators to be acquitted of murder which carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment and instead be tried for manslaughter which carries a considerably shorter maximum sentence. The former attorney-general Rob Hulls

I set her punishment based on the facts of the case and witness testimony. I took into consideration the fact that she had suffered abuse at the hands of her husband, during what she referred to as “fits of anger”. I found that although she took a man’s life, she sincerely acted out of provocation.

How would teenagers react to a law that states that one must receive a high school diploma in order to obtain a driver’s license? I, for one, would not be a jolly camper, as I rely on the ability to drive for functions similar to school or work. I also see countless young adults would oppose this law for the same reasons. In this essay, I will dive into the effects of this law, including the hidden obscurities that would have those effects tied to them.

I presume that the law developed homicides into separate crimes simply because not all crimes are the same. Each crime should be sentenced based on actus reus and mens rea; for example, one driving after taking one puff off of marijuana may not have the mental capacity to kill another human being, but they do. Therefore, it would not be equivalent to someone who intentionally went out to torture and murder someone, because the crime is more heinous. (see pg. 332) While both are murder, the influenced driver had “no intention” to hurt someone else, even though the individual acted recklessly. With this being said, the individual should face a lesser sentence since the murder mens rea was not present. The development of division in the murder

The two rationales behind partial defence are justificatory approach and excusatory approach. In CJA the emphasis moves from ‘compassionate excuse’ in the Homicide Act 1957 to ‘imperfect justification’. According to the justificatory approach, a killing in anger produced by serious wrongdoing is ethically less wicked and deserves a

In England, the law has tried to deal with the inadequacies and criticism of the dеfеncе of diminished responsibility through the reformation of the law on diminished responsibility in section 2 of the Homicide Act. As a result, England has a new definition for the dеfеncе of diminished responsibility which has done away with the controversial element of ‘abnormality of the mind’ and has introduced the element of ‘abnormality of mental functioning’. The new definition of the dеfеncе states that, the defendant must prove that he or she suffered from an abnormality of mental functioning, arising from a recognised medical condition, which provides an explanation for committing the killing, it must be proved that the abnormality substantially

In Corrections the most common problem involved with a retributive philosophy of punishing is to find out what the punishment is for specific offenses. Just deserts mean that the punishment must equal to the seriousness of the wrong done plus the crime committed, in addition to the wrongdoers culpability (Alarid & Reichel, 2013). Someone who kills someone else should receive a harsh punishment like prison time and different offenses receive different sentences and not all equal. A murderer in New Zealand was found guilty of killing his ex-partner, Alicia ‘AJ’ McCallion, whose mother is Millie. The murderer’s name is Karl John Eddy and he was sentenced in the High Court of Auckland, to life imprisonment for the murder. Eddy slit the hairdresser Alicia’s throat, and her body was found with many stab wounds (Manning, 2014). The multiple stab wounds found on Alicia’s body by the authorities and the slit throat showed that it was a horrible act of cold-blooded murder. Eddy said that he was under the influenced by sleeping tablets on the night of Alicia’s murder and woke up the next day in the morning and saw the texts supposedly from Alicia on his phone. The Crown argued Eddy killed his ex-Alicia and the texts on Eddy’s phone were actually text messages he sent to himself (Manning, 2014). Under the influence of sleeping tablets or not, there’s still no justified

I have a dream…Here by starting with the title of Martin Luther King’s Historical Speech. My dream, my ambition is to be the person who brings down the entire law system in my country to simplicity where everyone should be able to understand the law.

Four major issues in capital punishment are debated, most aspects of which were touched upon by Seton Hall’s panel discussion on the death penalty. The first issue stands as deterrence. A major purpose of criminal punishment is to conclude future criminal conduct. The deterrence theory suggests that a rational person will avoid criminal behavior if the severity of the punishment outweighs the benefits of the illegal conduct. It is believed that fear of death “deters” people from committing a crime. Most criminals would think twice before committing murder if they knew their own lives were at stake. When attached to certain crimes, the penalty of death exerts a positive moral influence, placing a stigma on certain crimes like manslaughter, which results in attitudes of horror to such acts.

The general defence of necessity has for long been in dispute all around the world. The legal aspects of this defence will be briefly discussed in terms of the South African- as well as the English law. As of the S v Goliath case, the South African view in this particular matter has been established as for the notion of killing another person out of necessity, and has since stayed unchanged. The English Law does not regard the defence of necessity as a justification, but rather as an excuse to a crime, which is then classified as duress. Seen as these two legal systems contradict each other, dispute seems to continue reigning over the world, as will stay the case until a culmination to this age is brought forth.