The defendant appealed against his conviction for murder, saying that he suffered from alcohol dependency syndrome, and that this amounted to a diminished responsibility.
Held: The appeal succeeded and and a conviction for manslaughter was substituted. Whether or not brain damage has occurred, a live issue of diminished responsibility may nonetheless fall to be determined by the jury, namely, where there is evidence that alcohol or drug dependency has reached such an extent or nature in the particular case that it constituted an abnormality of mind and where there is evidence that that abnormality impacted upon responsibility for the criminal act in question.
Sir Igor Judge P said: ‘Dealing with the point very broadly, the consumption of alcohol before a defendant acts with murderous intent and kills cannot, without more, bring his actions within the concept of diminished responsibility. On its own, voluntary intoxication falls outside the ambit of the defence. This is consistent with the general approach of the law that, save in the context of offences of specific intent and proof of that intent, criminal acts committed under the influence of self induced intoxication are not for that reason excused. Public policy proceeds on the basis that a defendant who voluntarily takes alcohol and behaves in a way which he might not have behaved when sober is not normally entitled to be excused from the consequences of his actions . . In the context of diminished responsibility, alcoholism has now been recognised as a disease which may fall within the ambit of s.2 of the 1957 Act. The principle was summarised in the Court of Appeal in Dietschmann by Rose LJ . .’
Judges:
Sir Igor Judge P
Citations:
[2008] EWCA Crim 1305, [2008] Crim LR 976, [2008] 2 Cr App R 34, [2008] 3 All ER 898, [2009] 1 WLR 496
Links:
Statutes:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Citing:
Cited – Regina v Dietschmann HL 27-Feb-2003
Voluntary drunkenness No Diminished Responsibility
The defendant had been convicted of murder. At the time of the assault, he was both intoxicated to the point of losing his inhibitions and was also suffering an abnormality of mind sufficient substantially to reduce his mental responsibility.
Cited by:
See Also – Wood, Regina v (No 2) CACD 2-Apr-2009
The defendant appealed against his sentence to life imprisonment after conviction for manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
Held: The court faced two questions. Did the case require a sentence of life imprisonment, and also . .
Cited – Regina v Khan CACD 27-Jul-2009
On his trial for murder the defendant produced unchallenged expert evidence that at the time of the offence, his mental responsibility for the killing was substantially impaired by his mental illness. He said that in these circumstances the charge . .
Cited – Stewart, Regina v CACD 26-Mar-2009
The defendant appealed against his conviction for murder, saying that the judge should have directed the jury as to the impact of alcohol dependency syndrome on his plea of diminished responsibility where there had been no discernible brain damage. . .
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: 23 March 2022; Ref: scu.270208