With Malice Aforethought: A Study of the Crime and Punishment for Homicide

With Malice Aforethought: A Study of the Crime and Punishment for Homicide
ISBN-10
1847311849
ISBN-13
9781847311849
Series
With Malice Aforethought
Category
Law
Pages
216
Language
English
Published
2004-10-19
Publisher
Bloomsbury Publishing
Authors
Louis Blom-Cooper, Terence Morris

Description

For more than three centuries the criminal law has given rise to a divergent set of approaches to the crime of homicide. Whereas the law of murder has not conceptually changed,the crime of manslaughter has resulted in some forms of homicide being visited with relatively minor penalties. These various categories of unlawful killing present considerable problems relating to intention, or lack of it, and the culpability of those whose behaviour, while lacking in evident malice, is characterised by the grossest recklessness. The reaction of the relatives of victims is generally simpler. They frequently find it impossible to understand how those who kill by dangerous or drunken driving may receive comparatively lenient sentences, while those convicted of manslaughter following a drunken brawl may be dealt with more severely, and yet others, convicted of so-called 'mercy killings', are subject to the mandatory penalty of life imprisonment. This book addresses the powerful and controversial arguments for the current distinctions between murder, manslaughter and other specific categories of crime to be abolished and subsumed within a single crime of culpable homicide. In the course of this analysis the authors consider a number of issues of great contemporary importance, including the presentation of expert evidence in cases involving unexplained infant death, corporate killing, and the question of the defences available to the accused, including self-defence and provocation, where popular notions of what is reasonable or justifiable may be at variance with legal precedent. While this book aims to consider criminal homicide in its social, historical and legal setting, it also goes far beyond in setting out the case for radical reform.

Similar books

  • Property Law: Rules, Policies, and Practices
    By Joseph William Singer, Bethany R. Berger, Nestor M. Davidson

    See also Country Community Timberlake Village v. HMW Special Utility District of Harris, 438 S.W.3d 661 (Tex. Ct. App. 2014) (holding that a neighboring ...

  • Entertainment Law and Business
    By William D. Henslee, Elizabeth Henslee

    After Justin Timberlake exposed Janet Jackson's pierced nipple on national television for 9/16ths of a second, the FCC received over 540,000 complaints.

  • The Common Law in Colonial America: Volume III: The Chesapeake and New England, 1660-1750
    By William E. Nelson

    Volume III: The Chesapeake and New England, 1660-1750 William E. Nelson ... Decision of Law, Surry County Ct. 1673/74, in Eliza Timberlake Davis ed., ...

  • The Indiana State Constitution
    By William P. McLauchlan

    E. Edwards v. California, 314 U.S. 160 (1941), 66 Edwards v. Housing Authority of City of ... Timberlake, 148 Ind. 38,46 N.E.339 (1897), 69,70 Graves v.

  • Child Support Guidelines: Interpretation and Application
    By Laura W. Morgan

    Fitzgerald, 4.08[B][2], 5.05[D] Fitzgerald v. ... Mastrapa-Font, 7.03[A][3] Fontaine, In re, 5.05[D] Fontenette v. ... Frost, 5.05[A] Formato v.

  • Maritime Fraud and Piracy
    By Paul Todd

    The sole remedy is avoidance, however; damages cannot be claimed under s. ... 17, it places a great deal of power in the hands of insurance companies to ...

  • Principles of the Carriage of Goods by Sea
    By Paul Todd

    Normally, a mate«s receipt would later be given up for a bill of lading, ... they necessarily prejudice the rights of those who deal in the goods ...

  • Maryland Employment Law
    By Stanley Mazaroff, Todd Horn

    27 257 U.S. 184, 42 S. Ct. 72, 66 L. Ed. 189 (1921). ... 38 Argensinger, “Right to Strike”: Labor Organization and the New Deal in Baltimore, 78 MD . HIST .

  • Contract Law in New Zealand
    By Stephen Todd, Jeremy Finn

    704 Contract and Commercial Law Act 2017, s. 80. 705 Leith v. Gould [1986] 1 NZLR 760. It is not clear how a New Zealand court would deal with a case such ...

  • Tort Law in New Zealand
    By Stephen Todd

    ... to meet the reasonable expectations of claimants about how the corporation should deal with them, by, inter alia, ... 7 Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975, s.