Personal Case Noting of the case of R v Ahluwalia PDF

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My own personal understanding and case noting of the case of R v Ahluwalia...

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Case Noting of the case of R v Ahluwalia Case Name And Citation R v Ahluwalia [1992] 4 All ER 889

Court and Judges England and Wales Court of Appeal (Criminal Division): Lord Taylor of Gosforth CJ, Thomas Swinton, Judge JJ

Parties Appellant: Kiranjit Ahluwalia. Respondent: Regina; The Crown

Material Facts The defendant was a woman who had to suffered years of torment and humiliation at the hands of her husband which ultimately led to her pouring petrol on him and lighting him on alight, leading to his slow painful death six days later. The defendant, a mother of two, met her husband through an arranged marriage went through an approximate amount of 10 years or more of abuse from her husband even whilst going through pregnancy. Despite managing to get the court’s attention and successfully applying for injunctions, this was of no use and in fact may have exacerbated the problem as her husband’s action grew more and more violent. This has also led to her contemplating suicide twice during these 10 grueling years. On the night of the act, there was an argument between the two of them where the husband was threatening the wife with violence for money and for them to leave the house with the two children in order for him to live there with his girlfriend whom he was having an affair with at work. The defendant was charged with murder but appealed for a charge of voluntary manslaughter on the grounds of her actions were done so through a loss of control.

Question of Law/Issues The issues faced by the court in the case are as follow:

1) Whether the previous case of R v Duffy’s definition of provocation; “a sudden and temporary loss of control” still applicable as good law and if so, 2) Whether the defense of Loss of Control able to be successfully deployed here 3) Whether a defense of diminished responsibility available?

Decision The court rejected the appeal of applying the defense of loss of control (previously known as provocation) as the Court of Appeal agreed with the definition of provocation provided by R v Duffy. Hence, the term of “sudden and temporary loss of control” could not be successfully applied, negating the establishment of said defense. However, another appeal was made with the focus on establishing the defense of diminished responsibility with the surfacing of fresh medical evidence, prompting a retrial for the Court of Appeal.

Detailed reasons for the decision The case is one that has garnered a fair amount of attention from those practicing the law as well as from public. The decisions in the case were mainly based on the precedence of previous cases where definitions and understandings were taken from. The main definition of a loss of control can be taken from the words of Devlin J in the case of R v Duffy (1949); “Provocation is some act, or series of acts, done by the dead man to the accused which would cause in any reasonable person, and actually causes in the accused, a sudden and temporary loss of self-control, rendering the accused so subject to passion as to make him or her for the moment not master of his mind.”. The main importance of his definition would be the words of sudden and temporary loss of control which waw retained and used due to the easy understanding of the meaning of the phrase for the jury and avoiding any confusion. The phrase can also be taken even if there was some delay in time between the act of killing and the provoking words or act. However, the longer the delay and the stronger the evidence provided that the act was done through deliberation, the harder it would be for the defense to be employed.

The jury were directed to take into account the characteristics of the defendant given the level of necessity required to prove whether or not a reasonable person possessing said qualities of the defendant would or would not have lost their sense of self control under the victim’s provocations. However, in this case the defendant was unable to procure any sort of evidence, physically or medically. Thus, she was unable to prove her suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder as well as a battered woman syndrome, disallowing her from providing any characteristic that might help her case for the jury. As such the appeal for the defense of loss of control failed, despite fulfilling each of the three limb test for the defense.However, an appeal was made and fresh medical evidence was found and given, allowing her a retrial to reduce her sentencing of murder to one of voluntary manslaughter as the verdict of murder resulting from her unstable mental condition will put the result to one that is unsafe and unsatisfactory.

Ratio Decidendi The case takes a strong preference in the usage of precedence or stare decisis in that it sticks to the wordings of previous case laws so as to not cause confusion among the juries. With that, it is safe, from an initial standpoint, to deduce that the defendant had a low chance of success in employing the defense of loss of control as there was indeed a reasonable time gap in between the husbands provoking words and actions and the time of act from the wife. Thus, the appeal for a defense of provocation or otherwise loss of control would not be made successful. The case also takes its sources of its reasoning in section 3 of the Homicide Act 1957. However, with medical evidence, a defense of diminished responsibility emerges and can be employed here with the referring of a battered woman syndrome and as such, reduced her charge of murder to one of voluntary manslaughter via diminished responsibility. This was followed by the courts encouragement to the jury to take in account characteristics of the defendant at the time of killing or actions otherwise so as to apply on the reasonable mans test. This prompted the courts in future to take into account cases where women were domestically abused to have leniency for cases of loss of control with the existence of a slow burn provocation....