The defendant had shot four people in two different locations. He suffered a number of conditions, including paranoid psychopathy, which raised the possibility of diminished responsibility, although the jury had rejected that defence. He now appealed complaining that the jury had not been allowed to consider his heavy intoxication as possibly establishing diminished responsibility.
Held: The appeal failed. The effect on the mind of voluntary intoxication could not give rise to diminished responsibility. Lord Widgery CJ said: ‘We recognise that cases may arise hereafter where the accused proves such a craving for drink or drugs as to produce in itself an abnormality of mind but that is not proved in this case. The appellant did not give evidence and we do not see how self-induced intoxication can of itself produce an abnormality of mind due to inherent causes.’
Judges:
Lord Widgery CJ
Citations:
[1975] 61 Cr App R 261
Statutes:
Cited by:
Applied – Dietschmann v Regina CACD 5-Oct-2001
The defendant was convicted of murder. He claimed diminished responsibility arising from a disorder, being either according to one psychiatrist, arising from alcohol dependence syndrome, or according to another, a depressed grief reaction. The . .
Approved – Regina v Gittens CACD 1984
Lord Lane set out the directions to be given to a jury on the defence of diminished responsibility: ‘Where a defendant suffers from an abnormality of mind arising from arrested or retarded development or inherent causes or induced by disease or . .
Cited – Dowds v Regina CACzD 22-Feb-2012
The defendant appealed against his conviction for murder, saying that he should have been allowed to rely on a plea of diminished responsibility given the changes to section 2 of the 1957 Act introduced in 2009. He said that his alcoholism should . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Crime
Updated: 28 April 2022; Ref: scu.180040