R v White [1910] 2 KB 124 The defendant put some poison in his mother's milk with the intention of killing

her. The mother took a few sips and went to sleep and never woke up. Medical reports revealed that she died from a heart attack and not the poison. The defendant was not liable for her murder as his act of poisoning the milk was not the cause of death. He was liable for attempt. This case established the 'but for' test. Ie would the result have occurred but for the actions of the defendant? If the answer is yes the defendant is not liable.

R v Dalloway (1847) 2 Cox 273 The defendant was driving a horse and cart down a road without holding on to the reins. A child ran in front of the cart and was killed. The defendant was not liable as he would not have been able to stop the cart in time even if he had been holding the reins. This case is authority for the point that the result must be caused by a culpable act. Here the culpable act was not holding the reins, which was not the cause of death. The defendant was charged with gross negligence manslaughter for his involvement in an incident involving a train becoming derailed. The defendant was the foreman of some works being carried out on the track. He misread the train time-table and ordered the work to be done at a time when the train was due. In addition the lookout man was not standing at the correct distance to give an adequate warning and the driver was not paying sufficient attention to stop the train in time. The defendant argued that if the lookout man and driver were doing their job correctly the incident would not have occurred.

Held: The defendant's conviction was upheld. The defendant's action need not be

the only cause. Liability can arise provided the defendant's act was more than a minimal cause.

[COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEAL] THE KING v. DYSON

1908 May 22, 25 Criminal Appeal-Conviction involving "no substantial Miscarriage of Justice," Meaning ofPower of Court to find Facts-Criminal Appeal Act, 1907 (7 Edw. 7, c. 23), s. 4, sub-s. 1. On the trial of an indictment for manslaughter there was evidence that the prisoner had inflicted injuries upon the deceased more than a year and a day before the date of the death, and also certain further injuries within that period which tended to accelerate the death. The judge directed the jury that they might find the prisoner guilty even if they thought that the death was wholly caused by the earlier injuries. The jury convicted the prisoner. By s. 4, sub-s. 1, of the Criminal Appeal Act, 1907, "The Court may, notwithstanding that they are of opinion that the point raised in the appeal might be decided in favour of the appellant, dismiss the appeal if they consider that no substantial miscarriage of justice has actually occurred." Upon an appeal against the conviction on the ground of misdirection Held, that, although upon a proper direction the jury would probably have found that the later injuries accelerated the death, as it was not certain that they would have clone so, and m the Court were not entitled under the above section to substitute themselves for the jury and, find. the facts necessary for conviction, they could not say that there had been no substantial miscarriage of justice, so as to entitle them to dismiss the appeal upon that ground. APPEAL to the Court of Criminal Appeal from a conviction at the Manchester Assizes. The prisoner was indicted for the manslaughter of his infant child. According to the evidence, on November 18, 1906, the prisoner seized the child, then a baby three months old, by the legs and

flung it down and beat it into a condition of unconsciousness. Shortly afterwards its skull was found to be fractured. For this assault he was prosecuted at the Salford Borough Police Court under the Prevention of Cruelty to Children Act, 1904, and sentenced to four months' imprisonment. On December 29, 1907, the prisoner was heard to beat the child, and the following morning its face and head were found to be severely bruised. For this assault he was also prosecuted at the police court on January 18, 1908, and sentenced to six months' imprisonment. On February 17, 1908, the child was admitted into the hospital suffering from traumatic meningitis from which it died on March 5, 1908. At the time of its admission into the hospital all external marks of the violence of the previous December 29 had disappeared. The medical evidence went to show that the fracture of the skull in so young a child would necessarily cause destruction of the brain tissue, and eventually death, though the child might possibly live with such a fracture for some few years; that the fracture was the main cause of the child's death ; but that the subsequent acts of violence, if they took place, would accelerate the death. It was contended on behalf of the prisoner that the sole cause of death was the original fracture of the skull. For the Crown if., was contended that the death was accelerated by the injury inflicted by the prisoner in December, 1907. The judge, in tile course of the summing-up, directed the jury that if they were satisfied that the prisoner either caused the child's death by his violence on November 13, 1906, or accelerated it by his subsequent violence on December 29, 1907, they must find him guilty. The jury having found the prisoner guilty, he appealed against the conviction to the Court of Criminal Appeal. Cremlyn for the prisoner. The judge misdirected the jury in leading them to suppose that they could convict the prisoner if they thought the death was not accelerated by the later acts of violence, but was wholly caused by the injury inflicted in November, 1906. Their verdict was a general verdict, and it may be that they intended to negative the acceleration of the death by the more recent assault. It is clear that a person cannot be held guilty of manslaughter where the deceased did not die within a year and a day after the cause of death. Here the child did not die till nearly sixteen months after the fracture of its skull. Shepherd Little, for the prosecution. It is not disputed that there was a misdirection. But the conviction, being bad upon a purely technical point, did not involve any substantial injustice; and the Court are consequently empowered to dismiss the appeal by virtue of the proviso in s. 4, subs. 1, of the Criminal Appeal Act, 1907, which provides that "the Court may, notwithstanding that they are of opinion that the point raised in the appeal might be decided in favour of the appellant, dismiss the appeal if they consider that no substantial miscarriage of justice has actually occurred." Cur. adv. vult. May 25. The judgment of the Court (Lord Alverstone C.J., Lawrance and Ridley JJ.) was delivered by LORD ALVERSTONE C.J. The prisoner was indicted for the manslaughter of his child, who died on March 5, 1908. There was evidence that the prisoner had inflicted injuries upon the child in November, 1906, and certain further injuries in December, 1907. The jury convicted the prisoner, who appeals against that conviction upon the ground that the judge misdirected the jury

in that he left it to them to find the prisoner guilty if they considered the death to have been caused by the injuries inflicted in 1906. 'That was clearly not a proper direction, for, whatever one may think of the merits of such a rule of law, it is still undoubtedly the law of the land that no person can be convicted of manslaughter where the death does not occur within a year and a day after the injury was inflicted, for in that event it must be attributed to some other cause. Under these circumstances, there having been a misdirection, the question arises whether the Court can nevertheless dismiss the appeal under s. 4, sub-s. 1, of the Criminal Appeal Act, 1907, upon the ground that no substantial miscarriage of justice has actually occurred by reason of the conviction. The proper question to have been submitted to the jury was whether the prisoner accelerated the child's death by the injuries which he inflicted in December, 1907. For if he did, the fact that the child was already suffering from meningitis, from which it would in any event have died before long, would afford no answer to the charge of causing its death: Rex v. Martin.(1) And if that question had been left to the jury, they would in all probability have found the prisoner guilty on that ground; indeed it was the only ground upon which counsel for the prosecution invited them to convict. But it is one thing to say that the jury on a proper direction would probably have so convicted; it is another to say positively that there has been no substantial miscarriage of justice. We feel that we cannot act upon the proviso in sub-s. 1 of s. 4, for it is in our judgment plain that we cannot substitute ourselves for the jury and find the facts which are necessary to support the conviction. The proviso is intended to apply to a case in which the evidence is such that the jury must have found the prisoner guilty if they had been properly directed. It does not apply where the evidence leaves it in doubt whether they would have so found; and here the medical evidence established that there were no external marks of recent injury, a fact which might have induced the jury to find that the assault committed in December, 1907, did not accelerate the death. The case of Makin v. Attorney General for New South Wales(2) is directly in point. In a Criminal Law Amendment Act of the Colony it was provided, with reference to appeals upon a case stated, that "no conviction or judgment thereon shall be reversed, arrested or avoided in any case so stated unless for some substantial wrong, or other miscarriage of justice." And the Privy Council held that that provision did not transfer from the jury to the Court the determination of the question whether the evidence established the guilt of the accused. "Their Lordships," they said, "do not think it can properly be said that there has been no substantial wrong or miscarriage of justice, where on a point material to the guilt or innocence of the accused the jury have . . . . been invited by the judge to consider in arriving at their verdict matters which ought not to have been submitted to them." That passage indicates the principle on which we ought to proceed here. It is to be regretted that the Legislature when passing the Criminal Appeal Act did not empower the Court to order a new trial, for or the present is a case in which it is eminently desirable that such a power should exist. But they did not think fit to do so, and we have no choice but to allow the appeal. Conviction quashed. Solicitor for prisoner: H. Gilmour Jones, Salford. Solicitors for prosecution: Crofton, Craven & Worthington, Manchester. J. F.C.

R v Woollin
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R v Woollin
House of Lords
22 July 1998

Date decided

Full case name

Regina v Stephen Leslie Woollin

[1999] 1 A.C. 82; [1998] 3 W.L.R. 382;

Citations

[1998] 4 All E.R. 103

Lord Browne-Wilkinson; Lord Nolan;

Judges sitting

Lord Steyn; Lord Hoffmann; Lord Hope of Craighead

Cases cited

R. v Nedrick (Ransford Delroy)

Criminal Appeal Act 1968; Criminal

Legislation cited

Justice Act 1967

Case history

Prior actions

tbc

Subsequent actions

none

Keywords

Omissions; Intention, Mens Rea, Manslaughter

v t e

R v Woollin is a case in English criminal law, in which the subject of intention within Mens Rea was examined and refined.

[edit] Facts
Having given various explanations for his three-month-old son's injuries in the ambulance and in the first two police interviews, Woollin eventually admitted that he had 'lost his cool' when his son had choked on his food. He had picked him up, shaken him and thrown him across the room with considerable force towards a pram standing next to a wall about five feet away. He stated that he had not intended or thought that he would kill the child and had not wanted the child to die, but his actions caused the infant's death as the child hit the floor, missing the pram.

[edit] Judgment
Lord Steyn affirmed the test in R v Nedrick, but substituted the word 'infer' for 'find', that the jury may find indirect intention, ie. the intention of the person who does not aim or need to kill or even to cause grievous bodily harm to anyone but nonetheless takes (what he knows to be) an outrageously high risk of doing so, if the result of the defendant's action was virtually certain to be death or grievous bodily harm (objective test), and the defendant personally foresaw this (subjective test): Where the charge is murder and in the rare cases where the simple direction is not enough, the jury should be directed that they are not entitled to find the necessary intention, unless they feel sure that death or serious bodily harm was a virtual certainty (barring some unforeseen intervention) as a result of the defendant's actions and that the defendant appreciated that such was the case. That they are only "not entitled to find the necessary intention" may imply that they have no obligation to find the necessary intention even where death or grievous bodily harm was a virtual certainty, affording the jury some discretion. Woollin's murder conviction was quashed as the trial judge had put to the jury that there had to be "substantial risk" of death or grievous bodily harm, which was held to be far wider in scope than virtual certainty. The crown court originally convicted Woollin with Murder of the child up on which the court of appeal upheld this decison. Later in the case, the House of Lords reversed the original decision made by the Crown Court now convicting Woollin of Manslaughter

DPP v Smith [1961] AC 290 House of Lords A policeman tried to stop the defendant from driving off with stolen goods by jumping on to the bonnet of the car. The defendant drove off at speed and zigzagged in order to get the police office off the car. The defendant argued he did not intend to harm the policeman. The policeman was knocked onto the path of an oncoming car and killed. The defendant was convicted of murder. The trial judge directed the jury as follows: If you are satisfied that ... he must as a reasonable man have contemplated that grievous bodily harm was likely to result to that officer ... and that such harm did happen and the officer died in consequence, then the accused is guilty of capital murder. ... On the other hand, if you are not satisfied that he intended to inflict grievous bodily harm upon the officer in other words, if you think he could not as a reasonable man have contemplated that grievous bodily harm would result to the officer in consequence of his actions - well, then, the verdict would be guilty of manslaughter. The jury convicted of murder and the defendant appealed on the grounds that this was a mis-direction and that a subjective test should apply. The Court of Appeal quashed his conviction for murder and substituted a manslaughter conviction applying a subjective test. The prosecution appealed to the House of Lords who re-instated the murder conviction and held that there was no mis-direction thereby holding an objective test was applicable.