PC (Jamaica) The defendants appealed against their convictions for capital murder.
Held: The appeals were allowed, and non-capital convictions substituted. It is not enough to comply with section 2(2), for the judge to give directions to the jury about the law of joint enterprise and as to whether the murder was committed in the circumstances which make it capital murder as set out in subsection (1). The jury must, of course, be invited in a case of that kind to reach a separate verdict for each defendant on the question whether he is guilty of murder. But it must also be made clear to the jury that a separate verdict is required against each defendant as to whether the murder which he committed was capital murder as defined by the statute.
Judges:
Lord Bingham of Cornhill, Lord Hope of Craighead, Lord Clyde, Lord Hutton, Lord Millett
Citations:
[2003] UKPC 69
Links:
Statutes:
Offences against the Person Act 1864 2(2)
Citing:
Cited – Daley v The Queen PC 8-Dec-1997
(Jamaica) Whether murder was a capital murder under Jamaican legislation. The board explained the effect of s2(2) of the Act. Where two or more persons are found guilty of any of the categories of murder referred to in subsection (1) – except that . .
Cited – Alexander Von Starck v The Queen PC 28-Feb-2000
(Jamaica) The defendant had fatally stabbed a woman. On arrest, he admitted killing her and that he had the knife which he had used to do so. He gave the police officer a pouch containing a knife, on which blood of the same group as that of the . .
Cited – Regina v Maxwell HL 1990
The defendant had hired two men to enter his former partner’s house to commit robbery. It was his defence that he did not contemplate violence, and that he was only guilty of the offence of burglary. The prosecution would not add a count of burglary . .
Cited by:
Cited – Coutts, Regina v CACD 21-Jan-2005
The defendant appealed his conviction for murder, saying that the judge should have left to the jury the alternative conviction for manslaughter. The victim had died through strangulation during a sexual assault by the defendant. He said it had not . .
Cited – Regina v Coutts HL 19-Jul-2006
The defendant was convicted of murder. Evidence during the trial suggested a possibility of manslaughter, but neither the defence nor prosecution proposed the alternate verdict. The defendant now appealed saying that the judge had an independent . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Commonwealth, Crime
Updated: 08 June 2022; Ref: scu.186815
