What is a suicide pact?

A suicide pact is defined as a common agreement between two or more people to die, whether or not each person in that agreement intends to take their own life.

“It shall be manslaughter and shall not be murder, for a person acting in pursuance of a suicide pact between him and another to kill the other or be a party to the other killing himself or being killed by a third person.”

The onus in these circumstances falls on the defendant, they must satisfy the jury on the balance of probabilities that there was a suicide pact that existed and if so, that the defendant at the time of the killing, was acting in pursuance of it and had a settled intention of dying too in pursuance of it.

Voluntary Manslaughter is primarily committed in one of three ways but specifically to this; killing with the intent for murder but where a partial defence applies namely loss of control, diminished responsibility or killing to a suicide pact.

What are mercy killings?

Unlike suicide pacts, there is not a definition of mercy killing in either statute or common law. A mercy killing is where an offender who takes the life or attempts to take the life of a victim may act on the wishes of that victim and therefore may be acting out of mercy however that does not provide a defence in law.

It constitutes murder, for a person to complete an act that ends the life of another, intending to kill them, even if that act is on the basis they are simply complying with the wishes of the other person so concerned. For example; if the victim had attempted to commit suicide but only succeeds in making themselves unconscious, a person then commits murder if they do an act that causes death of that victim, even if they believe that they are simply carrying out the victim’s wishes.

Application of the public interest stage to suicide pacts and mercy killings

What is of prime relevance is the circumstances of the death, the state of mind of the victim and suspect in assessing the public interest factors. The prosecutor or investigator should ensure they pursue all reasonable lines of enquiry in order to obtain an independent corroboration of the suspect’s account. The Crown Prosecution Service advises this information could come from a range of sources such as family or friends of the victim or health care professionals who may have cared for them. Prosecutors must then consider the factors objectively and assess the credibility plus reliability of the account provided.

In addition to this, they may consider if there is any other evidence supporting or tending against the suspect’s account. Absence of evidence to support a suspect’s account may be highly relevant to the weight attached to it. Also of relevance is whether the evidence to support certain factors is sufficiently close in time to the suspect’s act to allow an interference that the factors remained operative at the time.

Public Interest factors tending in favor of prosecution

A prosecution is likely to be require if any of the following present:

The victim was under the age of 18

The victim did not have the capacity to reach an informed decision to request another to end their life

There is no evidence of information to indicate that the victim had reached a voluntary, clear informed decision that they wished their life to end

A prosecution is less likely if:

The victim had reached a voluntary, clear, settled and informed decision that they wished for their life to end

They must have the freedom plus capacity to make that decision and that decision must have been made sufficiently close in time to their death and independently reached no influenced by pressure, control or coercion by anyone else

The suspect made a genuine attempt to take their own life at the same time

Prosecutors must look at the factors as a whole and in the instances where a charging decision is made of manslaughter, many of those factors will be relied upon by the defence as helpful mitigation with concern to a suicide pact.