In order to reduce Killing of a person to the crime of manslaughter, there must not only be sufficient provocation, but the jury must be satisfied that the fatal blow was given in consequence of that provocation. If A. had formed a deliberate design to kill B, and, after this, they meet and have a quarrel, and many blows pass, and A kill B , this will be murder, if the jury are of opinion that the death was in consequence of previous malice, and not of the sudden provocation.
There is an external element to an assessment of the reasonableness of a man’s actions. Coleridge J said: ‘though the law condescends to human frailty, it will not indulge human ferocity. It considers man to be a rational being, and requires that he should exercise a reasonable control over his passions’. A man cannot pray in aid his own violent disposition to bolster a defence of provocation.
Coleridge J
[1837] 8 Car and P 115, [1839] EngR 273, (1839) 8 Car and P 115, (1839) 173 ER 422
Commonlii
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Her Majestys Attorney General for Jersey v Holley PC 15-Jun-2005
(Jersey) The defendant appealed his conviction for murder, claiming a misdirection on the law of provocation. A chronic alcoholic, he had admitted killing his girlfriend with an axe. Nine law lords convened to seek to reconcile conflicting decisions . .
Cited – Mohammed, Regina v CACD 13-Jul-2005
The court granted permission to appeal against a conviction for murder on grounds that related to the judge’s summing up in respect of provocation: ‘Although Holley is a decision of the Privy Council and Morgan Smith a decision of the House of . .
Approved – Rex v Lesbini 1914
The test of provocation in a murder allegation, is not whether the occurrence is sufficient to deprive the particular individual in question of his self-control, having regard to his nature and idiosyncrasies, but whether it would suffice to deprive . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Crime
Leading Case
Updated: 01 November 2021; Ref: scu.228009
