HOMICIDE LAW IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE pot

[...]... SESS: 862 OUTPUT: Wed Sep 26 11:52:13 2007 Comparative Issues in the Law of Homicide distinguished not only from a planned murder but also from an intentional killing Taking a decision to commit murder (premeditating it) involves no less, but no more, than reaching a conclusion in practical reasoning that the killing will be done It need involve no more than this, in that the decision can be acted on straight... fault elements are morally indistinguishable, a point as well explained by Stephen as by anyone before or since: Is there anything to choose morally between the man who violently stabs another in the chest with the definite intention of killing him, and the man who stabs another in the chest with no definite intention at all as to his victim’s life or death, but with a feeling of indifference whether he... tattooing of minors18 and torture.19 These take their place alongside older, retained offences, such as administering a noxious thing20 or maliciously preventing a person on board (or having just quitted) a ship in distress or ship wrecked from trying to save his own life or that of another.21 Once again, it is worth referring to Stephen’s patriotic defence of the bewildering mélange of often overlapping... 11:52:13 2007 Comparative Issues in the Law of Homicide inclination in England and Wales routinely to make ‘causing death’ an aggravating factor in what is, in essence, a discrete non-fatal offence So, when the Legislature has created offences of female circumcision or torture, or health and safety and work offences, it has not buttressed them with an aggravated version in which death is caused in the course... treated as, in principle, an aggravating factor, but then ‘traded off ’ against the mitigation found in the shape of the battered woman’s inability to confront her abuser directly, or in the shape of an offender’s mental disorder.46 In such cases (albeit obviously not in other kinds of instances), the particular nature of mitigation undermines the status of premeditation as in any sense an aggravating factor... sentence track these distinctions.36 As in France and Germany, the most serious version of murder (first degree murder) will involve intentional killing, but the recommendation is that the most serious version of murder should go further It should include instances in which the killing involved both an intention to do serious injury and an awareness that there was a serious risk of causing death.37 The reason... sentiment…would appear to us to crown by feeble sentimentality a proceeding instituted secretly and carried on oppressively.4 Stephen did not mince words He railed against the restriction of meutre in French law to intentional killings This, he found, led to ‘distinctions revolting to common sense’.5 Further, the seemingly innocuous practice of sending a man condemned for parricide to the place of execution with... Finkelstein, ch 5 below 43 See J Hornsby, ‘On What’s Intentionally Done’ in S Shute, J Gardner and J Horder (eds), Action and Value in Criminal Law (Oxford, 1993) 44 See, further, J Gardner and H Jung, ‘Making Sense of Mens Rea: Antony Duff ’s Account’ (1991) 11 OJLS 559 at 567: ‘[b]ut it makes no sense to think of intention in action as having exclusionary force By the time one acts with a certain... of English law have been distorted by the expansive interpretation given to the presumption of innocence in this respect A degree of merger between trial and sentencing issues—a return, in that respect, to early modern trial practice58—would mean less awkwardness in incorporating motives into the definition of offences However, a convicted offender is already 53 Jury trial was introduced in France for... different vantagepoint in terms of the norms of criminal procedure, is what can shed such critical light We go in search of this understanding without being drawn into addressing second-order questions about the making of comparisons between jurisdictions It would be possible to ask, for example, whether a comparative analysis is fatally weakened if it is insufficiently broad or insufficiently deep . 15:17:29 2007 HOMICIDE LAW IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE A number of jurisdictions world-wide have changed or are considering changing their homicide laws. Important. America; Canada; Singapore and Malaysia) to examine key aspects of the law of homicide. Key areas examined include the structure of the law of homicide and the meaning