R V Moloney Essay

Christine She is the principal of the offence, she stabs Victor when he was begging her not to hurt him. Her act is the most immediate cause of the actus reus of the offence.
She is liable for assault occasioning actual bodily harm (Section 47 Offences Against the Person Act) and murder. Murder is a common law offence that requires proof that the defendant caused the death of the victim with the requisite mens rea. On the facts, there is no doubt that Chrisitne caused Victor's death. The mens rea of murder is satisfied by the prosecution proving that Christine intended to kill or intended to cause grievous bodily harm at the time of the act (R v Moloney [1985] 1 All ER 1025). After Woollin [1999] AC 82, the jury should be directed that they

Foresight of possibility is sufficient (Powell, English [1997] 4 All ER 545, 551B (Lord Steyn), 556G (Lord Hutton). In Powell [1997] 4 All ER 545, S1 and S2 went with P to buy drugs from V, a drug dealer. Before the transaction even took place, V was shot dead by P. S1 and S2 knew he was armed, and had realized he might use the gun to kill or cause grievous bodily harm on V. On these facts the House upheld their conviction of murder (Simester and Sullivan, 2013: 235). It is thus sufficient that the secondary party (S) foresaw that murder by the principal (P) was

Bert knew Christine had a history of violence and he contemplated that she might hurt Victor more seriously than what had been agreed on. Bert also sees the knife in Christine’s bag. Can Christine’s behavior be characterized as “fundamentally different” as stated in English [1997]? The fundamentally different test was reformulated in Rahman [2008] UKHL 45 where it was held a killing effected by principal offender with the intent to kill, the foresight of the secondary offender that the principal would only effect the intentional causing of serious injury did not automatically invoke the ‘fundamentally different’ rule (English [1997]) (Reed and Fitzpatrick, 2013: 139). In Rahman, the defendants took part in a group attack upon V using, as well as their fists and feet, various blunt weapons, including chair legs, pieces of fencing, baseball bats, metal tubing, a length of scaffolding pole. Ultimately, one of the attackers produced a knife and fatally stabbed V. The Court of Appeal held that in light of the whole circumstances of the attack, the stabbing was not inherently or necessarily fundamentally