Murder & Manslaughter

Well to be guilty of murder, the offence of murder, you have to have intended to cause really serious harm or to kill the victim. Manslaughter is different. In the case of manslaughter, whilst you may be responsible for the person’s death, you may have caused their death, but you didn’t intend to do so. Probably the best example I can give would be fights in a pub where for example if you’ve intended to repeatedly punch somebody in the head and then they die and you’ve intended that they die or that they suffer really serious harm, you would be guilty of murder. However, if there was a fight where you acted unlawfully, in that you were the aggressor but that you didn’t intend to cause that person really serious harm and after that fight that person sadly died, you would be guilty of manslaughter.

In relation to murder, the defences that that are available would be for example: alibi, in other words I wasn’t there, I have witnesses that will say that I was somewhere else. That would be an easy defence to run if it was accurate. Secondly, it might be self-defence, and again that’s commonly used where you’ve acted proportionately or reasonable and used sufficient force to defend yourself or somebody else who’s being attacked by the person that ends up dying. There may also be a defence of causation, in other words I did not cause that person’s death, there was an intervening act which caused the death and therefore my actions did not bring about the death of this person. There may be psychiatric or psychological issues that affected your mental state for example you may be running the defence of diminished responsibility where you were suffering from an abnormality of mind which meant that you couldn’t possibly have formed the necessary intent to be guilty of murder. Finally, there may also be the defence of loss of control which replaced the old defence of provocation but that’s quite uncommon in murder cases in my experience.

In murder cases looking first of all at what defence evidence might be necessary to assist your defence, of course if you’re running alibi it’s very important that there is evidence to support the fact that you were somewhere else at the time of the alleged  offence. There may also be a need for an expert to comment on the issue of, for example, causation, and an expert to support your case that your actions didn’t cause this person’s death. There may also, for example, that you’re running diminished responsibility there would have to be psychiatric or psychological medical evidence to show that you were suffering from an abnormality of mind. From the prosecution’s point of view however, the evidence that would commonly arise in those sorts of cases, of course firstly, there may be an eyewitness to the incident of course that would be powerful evidence for the prosecution to use, but in absence of an eyewitness you may well have telephone evidence. For example, they may seek to attribute a phone to you which they say is integral in the carrying out of the murder, for example it may have made contact which puts you in a particular place and they can then establish what we call cell site analysis of your phone to say well if you were carrying that phone the cell site data proves that you were in this particular place or location at the time of the murder. There may be scientific or forensic evidence that the prosecution rely on, for example, DNA, fingerprints and the like, gunshot residue if it’s a firearms case, those sorts of evidence pieces of evidence. There may also be ANPR, everybody sees the cameras around those cameras take photographs of number plates, if you’re in a car at the material time that prosecution may seek to use that sort of evidence as well. There may be CCTV of an incident, people will see CTTV cameras wherever they go in big cities these days and that evidence is often commonly used as well. So those are the general areas of evidence that might be used in in these types of case.

Well joint Enterprise is quite a complex area of law and often the prosecution will rely on murder cases by region of joint enterprise where there are one or more defendants. Probably the best way to explain how the law works in this regard is to give an example, and I would say the probably the easiest example to explain might be where you have a number of individuals that are charged with murder, for example, a gang or a group of people that attack one particular individual the victim you might only have one member of that group who stabs this person, or who shoots this person, but the other members of the group can also sometimes be guilty of murder on the basis of joint enterprise, if they participated in that incident and that they shared the same intention of the assailant. So for example, if you’ve encouraged or you’ve urged that person to go ahead and stab that person, or shoot that person, then you would be guilty of murder by reason of joint enterprise on the basis that you have the same intention as the actual assailant. If the prosecution can show that you either encouraged the assailant or that you participated and that you shared the same intention as the assailant, then you could be guilty of murder. Of course, the prosecution has to prove that you’re guilty based on joint enterprise and if you simply didn’t have that intention if, for example, you didn’t know what was going to happen, you certainly didn’t encourage the assailant, you may have thought that this person was going to be harmed but perhaps not seriously, but nonetheless you are part of that group then you may not be guilty of murder but you may still be guilty of manslaughter. So it’s quite a complex area, hence the need to instruct specialist lawyers.

Conspiracy to murder is simply an agreement between individuals to murder somebody or to cause somebody really serious harm or to kill someone. The key word is agreement, a conspiracy is in agreement, so it’s different people agreeing to do different things but with the same end. In relation to a conspiracy to murder, the situation may be that somebody has organized a hit, or an assassination, or a murder of somebody and has instructed other people to carry out different roles within that plot, for example, they may be the driver, they may be the person that acquires the firearm, they may be the person that provides the knife, but the key issue is an agreement and it doesn’t matter if the victim is killed or not, as long as there is an agreement which is a serious plan which all parties were party to and privy to then they can be guilty of a conspiracy to murder. Obviously in some cases people are murdered and they charge it as a conspiracy rather than just as a murder, but the key word is an agreement – can the prosecution prove that there’s an agreement between the parties.

Well in relation to murder there is only one sentence which is a mandatory life imprisonment, however, that doesn’t necessarily mean a full life term. There are occasions in really serious cases, and those are usually reported in the in the media, where somebody is sentenced to a full life term. It might be for example where somebody has murdered a police officer, or it might be where somebody’s murdered a child, or there’s been particularly horrific circumstances to the murder, a serial killer, somebody that is so dangerous that only a full life term is appropriate. But what it means in in most murder cases is that the judge will say life imprisonment and then he will fix a minimum term, which is essentially the term of imprisonment that must be served before the parole board can at least consider release. Thereafter, if the parole board does allow release, then you are unlicensed for life. In other words, if you ever commit another offence, you could be recalled on that license and sent back to prison for the remainder of the term. Probably the best examples are in relation to murders that involve the use of a firearm, for example, in a murder that involved the use of a firearm, the starting point is one of 30 years. The judge will pass sentence and say that this person will serve a minimum of 30 years. It’s not like other  offences where you might serve half of that offence or two-thirds of that offence, you must serve the full 30 years before you can be considered for parole. Obviously some murder cases are not regarded quite so seriously by the courts, for example, if there are no weapons used then the starting point will be considerably less than that and could be between 15 and 20 years, depending on the circumstances of the offence. But in short it’s a life sentence.

Ollies have a great deal of expertise and of course experience in representing people charged with this most serious of offences. We deal with people at a time where they are extremely vulnerable. If you are charged with this grave offence, that the likelihood is that you are in custody on remand, you may feel extremely anxious, you may be extremely worried about what the evidence is, you may be worried, of course, about how to get through the trial, you may be worried, of course about the outcome. In particular, we at Olliers pride ourselves in client care. That is to say we attend upon our clients on a very regular basis, we visit them we take their instructions in full, we listen to what they have to say, we listen to their fears, their concerns, their worries and we listen to the instructions and the detail that they provide which is integral for their defence. Possibly the most important aspect of Defending somebody in a murder case, aside from the client care, is preparing a very detailed defence statement, which of course sets out in detail what your defence is and it also seeks to challenge what the prosecution are alleging against you. So here at Ollie’s we’re all about the client, we’re all about providing the best possible client focus, the best possible client care and of course our aim is to achieve the best possible outcome for you.