The defence of necessity was first tested in the English case of R. v. Dudley and Stephens in the 19th century. [68] The Mignotte, sailing from Southampton to Sydney, sank. Three crew members and a cabin boy were trapped on a raft. They had starved to death and the cabin boy was close to death. Driven by extreme hunger, the crew killed and ate the cabin boy. The crew survived and were rescued, but were tried for murder. They argued that it was necessary to kill the cabin boy to save their own lives.
Lord Coleridge expressed his immense disapproval, saying: “To preserve one`s life is generally a duty, but it is perhaps the clearest and highest duty to sacrifice it.” The men were sentenced to hang, but public opinion, especially among the sailors, was outraged and overwhelmingly supported the crew`s right to save their own lives. In the end, the Crown commuted his sentences to six months. Insanity is a deranged state of mind and, therefore, not a defense against crimes of strict liability for which mens rea is not a prerequisite. An old case that establishes typical rules for insanity is the case of M`Naghten,[36] in which a man suffering from extreme paranoia believed that the Conservative Party of the United Kingdom would persecute him. He wanted to shoot and kill Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel, but instead had Peel`s secretary on his back. Mr. M`Naghten was found mentally ill and taken to a psychiatric hospital instead of being imprisoned. The case led to the rule that a person is presumed to be mentally sound and responsible, unless it is proven that (1) he worked with such a lack of reason (2) because of a mental illness (3) that he did not know the nature and quality of the action he did, or if he knew, that he didn`t know he was doing the wrong thing. These elements must be proven after weighing the probabilities.
In the United Kingdom, the criminal proceedings against Mr. Smith are called R v Smith. “R” is short for Rex or Regina, and the “v” stands for “versus”. England and Wales have strict liability offences that criminalise behaviour without having to prove the criminal mens rea. Most strict liability offences are based on law and are often the result of ambiguous language. They are generally regulatory in nature, with the result of a violation having particularly harmful consequences. Drunk driving is one example. If a person`s action is to have legal consequences, it must have caused harm to the victim in some way. The legal definition of “causation” is that the victim would not have been harmed without the defendant`s conduct. [15] If there is more than one cause of harm (e.g., the harm comes from more than one offender), the rule states that to be liable, a person`s actions must have “more than one minor or minor connection” to the harm.
[16] Another important rule of causality is that one must “take one`s sacrifice as he finds it.” For example, if P hits his friend Q in the head, but Q suffers from a rare skull disease and dies, then P may be guilty of manslaughter, no matter how unfortunate he is about arguing with Q. This is called a thin skull rule. [17] The two fundamental elements of a crime are doing what is criminal and the intent to commit it. In Latin, this is called actus reus et mens rea. However, for many crimes, it is not necessary to show a guilty mind, which is why the term “strict liability” is used. [6] In all cases, only reasonable and not excessive force may be used in self-defence. In R. v. Clegg,[56] a soldier from Northern Ireland shouted at a car approaching a checkpoint to stop.
When this was not the case, Clegg fired three shots and killed a woman. She was shot in the back and Mr. Clegg was convicted of murder because the car had passed at the time, the force was excessive and there was no justification for self-defense. Another way to express the rule of defensive force is that it must be proportional to the threat. For example, as the infamous case of R. v. Martin,[57] it is not a justified or proportionate exercise of self-defence force for the Norfolk farmer to have thieves break into his property if he attempts to fire several shotguns in the back. In this case, it was established that Mr.
Martin reduced responsibility for his actions because he suffered from a mental illness. The use of coercion as a defence is limited in many respects. The accused must not have given up a safe escape route. [63] Coercion was to be an order to do something specific so that one could not be threatened with harm to repay money, and then decided to rob a bank to pay it back, because that choice involves free will. [64] Intoxication has nothing to do with coercion, but coercion cannot be said to be wrong when intoxicated. Then a series of cases revolve around the decision to join a gang and inevitably do bad things. The rule is that if one is aware of the nature of the gang and puts oneself in a position where one could be threatened, coercion is not a defence – joining a gang that commits armed robbery probably excludes any forced defense,[65] but joining a gang that is not violent at the time of enlistment. cannot do so. [66] b. If the foreign ship is a merchant ship, there are two rules of jurisdiction, namely: (1) the French rule states that crimes committed on board can only be tried in our country if they undermine the peace and security of our country, and (2) the English rule states that crimes can be tried by a court, unless these crimes relate only to the internal administration of the ship.