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 have been treated as explaining his loss of self control and amounting to an abnormality of mind.
Held: His appeal failed. The defendant was attempting to circumvent well established common law that voluntary intoxications could not operate as a defence, and that had not been displaced by statute.
Judges:
Hughes LJ, Simon, Lang JJ
Citations:
[2012] EWCA Crim 281, [2012] Crim LR 612, [2012] 1 Cr App R 34, [2012] 3 All ER 154, [2012] 1 WLR 2576, [2012] MHLR 153, [2012] WLR(D) 43
Links:
Statutes:
Homicide Act 1957 82, Coroners and Justice Act 2009 52
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Citing:
Cited – Fenton, Regina v 1975
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 . .
Cited – Criminal proceedings against Lindqvist ECJ 6-Nov-2003
Mrs Lindqvist had set up an internet site for her local parish containing information about some of her colleagues in the parish. She gave names, jobs, hobbies and in one case some of the person’s employment and medical details. The Court decided . .
Cited – Wood, Regina v (No 1) CACD 20-Jun-2008
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 . .
Cited – 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 – 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 – Jaggard v Dickinson QBD 1980
The defendant broke two windows and damaged a curtain in the house of a stranger. She was drunk. She was charged under the 1971 Act, but she raised her honest but drunken and mistaken belief that the house belonged to a friend who would have . .
Cited by:
Cited – Bogdanic v The Secretary of State for The Home Department QBD 29-Aug-2014
The claimant challenged fines imposed on him after three illegal immigrants were found to have hidden in his lorry in the immigration control zone at Dunkirk. The 1999 At was to have been amended by the 2002 Act, and the implementation was by the . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Crime
Updated: 31 August 2022; Ref: scu.451458