Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Part I Introduction: the new brain sciences
- Part II Freedom to change
- Part III Neuroscience and the law
- 6 Human action, neuroscience and the law
- 7 Responsibility and the law
- 8 Programmed or licensed to kill? The new biology of femicide
- 9 Genes, responsibility and the law
- Part IV Stewardship of the new brain sciences
- Part V Conclusion
- References
- Index
7 - Responsibility and the law
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Part I Introduction: the new brain sciences
- Part II Freedom to change
- Part III Neuroscience and the law
- 6 Human action, neuroscience and the law
- 7 Responsibility and the law
- 8 Programmed or licensed to kill? The new biology of femicide
- 9 Genes, responsibility and the law
- Part IV Stewardship of the new brain sciences
- Part V Conclusion
- References
- Index
Summary
When a defendant claims in an English court that his offence was not murder but manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility, the judge has to explain to the jury that:
Where a person kills or is party to the killing of another, he shall not be convicted of murder if he was suffering from such abnormality of mind (whether arising from a condition of arrested or retarded development of mind or any inherent causes or induced by disease or injury) as substantially impaired his mental responsibility for his acts or omissions in doing or being a party to the killing.
This provision was introduced into the law of England and Wales by Act of Parliament in 1957. It had by then been part of the judge-made law of Scotland for many years. Both jurisdictions had also for centuries reduced murder to manslaughter in cases of provocation. Provocation too was recognised by Parliament in 1957, but its classic formulation, which judges are still required to use, was given to a jury by Lord Devlin as a trial judge in 1949:
Provocation is some act, or series of acts, done by the dead man to the accused which would cause in any reasonable person, and actually causes in the accused, a sudden and temporary loss of self-control, rendering the accused so subject to passion as to make him or her for the moment not master of his mind.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The New Brain SciencesPerils and Prospects, pp. 123 - 130Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004
- 1
- Cited by