“Mentally ill people are routinely forced to stand trial because the rules on fitness to appear in court are out of date, legal reformers have told the Government.”
The Independent, 14th August 2013
Source: www.independent.co.uk
“We have published a discussion paper examining the rules governing the defences of insanity and automatism.”
Law Commission, 23rd July 2013
Source: www.justice.gov.uk/lawcommission
Lady Hale gives the Alison Weatherfield Memorial Lecture at the Employment Lawyers Association (PDF)
Supreme Court, 10th July 2013
Source: www.supremecourt.gov.uk
“Courts should be able to regulate individual requests for assisted suicide without reference to parliament, senior judges have been told.”
The Guardian, 13th May 2013
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
“Changes to libel laws in England and Wales have been implemented after the Defamation Bill received Royal Assent late last week.”
OUT-LAW.com, 29th April 2013
Source: www.out-law.com
Regina v Asmeron [2013] EWCA Crim 435; [2013] WLR (D) 135
“Where a defendant was charged with an offence of entering the United Kingdom without a passport, contrary to section 2 of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants etc) Act 2004, the court could only rule that the defendant’s explanation for so doing was incapable in law of amounting to a good reason or a reasonable excuse if it could properly be said, on the true construction of the Act, that it would be inconsistent with the essential nature and purpose of the offence for the defendant’s explanation to be capable of amounting to a defence. The fact that a defence might be considered hopeless on the merits was not a good reason for a judge to withdraw it from the jury.”
WLR Daily, 11th April 2013
Source: www.iclr.co.uk
Regina v Dawes; Regina v Hatter; Regina v Bowyer [2013] EWCA Crim 322; [2013] WLR (D) 130
“For the purposes of the defence of loss of self-control, on a charge of murder, the questions whether the circumstances were extremely grave and whether the defendant’s sense of being seriously wronged by them was justifiable required objective assessment by the judge at the end of the evidence and, if the defence was left, by the jury considering their verdict. They were not to be decided by the defendant on the basis of any assertions he might make in evidence or any account he might give in the investigative process.”
WLR Daily, 26th March 2013
Source: www.iclr.co.uk
“Chris Grayling, the justice secretary, is considering abolishing the legal defence of ‘marital coercion’ that was unsuccessfully used by Vicky Pryce in her trial for taking speeding points on behalf of her husband.”
The Guardian, 31st March 2013
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
Hayes v Willoughby [2013] UKSC 17; [2013] WLR (D) 110
Where a person whose conduct would amount to harrassment of another within section 1(1) of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 sought to rely on the defence under section 1(3)(a) of the Act of having acted for the purpose of preventing or detecting crime, he had to show that he had thought rationally about the material suggesting the possibility of criminality and had formed the view that the conduct said to constitute harassment was appropriate for the purpose of preventing or detecting it.
WLR Daily, 20th March 2013
Source: www.iclr.co.uk
Hayes (FC) (Respondent) v Willoughby (Appellant) [2013] UKSC 17 | UKSC 2012/0010 (YouTube)
Supreme Court, 20th March 2013
“Harassment is both a civil wrong and a crime. It is a statutory defence to both that the conduct #was pursued for the purpose of preventing or detecting crime’ s.1(3) Protection of Harassment Act 1997. This decision grappled with the problem of the apparently honest but irrational harasser. Was he guilty or did this defence help him? In answering this, the Supreme Court looked at some basic concepts running through great swathes of the law, ‘purpose’, ‘subjective’, ‘objective’, ‘reasonableness’ and, critically, ‘rationality’ – so the case is one not simply for harassment lawyers to look at.”
UK Human Rights Blog, 20th March 2013
Source: www.ukhumanrightsblog.com
Regina v Asmelash [2013] EWCA Crim 157; [2013] WLR (D) 79
“There was nothing in the new statutory provisions relating to the partial defence to murder of loss of self control to suggest that Parliament intended that the normal rules which applied to voluntary intoxication should not apply. That did not mean that a defendant who had been drinking was deprived of the loss of control defence, it just meant that the defence had to be approached without reference to the defendant’s voluntary intoxication.”
WLR Daily, 22nd February 2013
Source: www.iclr.co.uk
Regina v Sadighpour [2012] EWCA Crim 2669; [2013] WLR (D) 4
“Section 31(7) of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 did not reiterate a requirement to satisfy an evidential burden, initially imposed by section 31(1) on a defendant in relation to refugee status, even when the Secretary of State had refused an asylum claim, and was apt to cover a situation where there had already been due consideration of the defendant’s claim to refugee status on the merits.”
WLR Daily, 11th December 2012
Source: www.iclr.co.uk
“The Newsnight scandal shows that the status quo does very little for defamation victims.”
The Guardian, 16th November 2012
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
“Media lawyers Niri Shan and Lorna Caddy explain why commenting on Twitter and Facebook is no longer the same as a chat down the pub.”
Daily Telegraph, 5th November 2012
Source: www.telegraph.co.uk
“From 1 October, the government will bring into force the provisions within the Equality Act 2010 (EA 2010) which prohibit age discrimination in the field of goods and services by virtue of the Equality Act 2010 (Commencement No 9) Order 2012. This means that commercial, charitable and public sector organisations will be required to eliminate unequal treatment on the grounds of age in respect of the provision of goods and services.”
Full story (PDF)
Cloisters, 11th September 2012
Source: www.cloisters.com
“This is Richard Dawkin’s battle cry in response to the recent High Court rejection of the challenge by locked-in sufferers to the murder and manslaughter laws in this country that have condemned them to an unknowable future of suffering.”
UK Human Rights Blog, 20th August 2012
Source: www.ukhumanrightsblog.com
“The Defences of Insanity and Automatism – Law Commissioner Professor David Ormerod says, ‘To produce meaningful reform proposals and be confident they will work in practice we need evidence of their current use and any problems they pose. Our scoping paper asks questions to provide that information.’ ”
Law Commission, 18th July 2012
Source: www.lawcommission.justice.gov.uk
“A a 58-year-old victim of locked-in syndrome has told the high court that a decision not to allow him to be helped to die would condemn him “to a ‘life’ of increasing misery”.”
The Guardian, 19th June 2012
Source: www.guardian.co.uk
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