10


HOMICIDE 10.1 Vocabulary ‘neutral’ and ‘marked’ words • expressing confidence/tentativeness


A Study the words in box a. 1 Use your dictionary to check the meanings.


2 What part of speech is each word? B Read the Hadford University handout.


1 Use your dictionary or another source to check the meanings of the highlighted phrases.


2 Which are the stressed syllables in each phrase? Which word in each phrase has the main stress?


C Look at the pictures on the opposite page. For each picture, talk about how you think the homicide


occurred and what defence, if any, the perpetrator may have. Use some of the words from Exercise A and the highlighted phrases from Exercise B.


D Study the words in box b.


1 Check the meanings, parts of speech and stress patterns.


2 Put the words into the correct box in the table below, as in the example.


Neutral hit


sad


violent ugly fall


E Read the extract below from a law student’s essay on homicide.


1 Use marked words in place of the blue (neutral) words/phrases. 2 Look at the red phrases. How strong are they?


From the evidence in this case, it’s clear that the victim was hit a number of times in a violent attack. The lady managed to escape from the attacker, but, subsequently, tripped over and fell down the stairwell to her untimely death. It’s generally accepted that, if the attacker intends to cause harm, the person can be found guilty of, at the least, manslaughter. In this sad case, we undoubtedly have such a situation.


It’s fair to say that the facts here fall into the category of the so-called ‘escape cases’. So we could relate them to the factors laid down by Lord Keith in DPP v Daley and McGhie [1980] in the Court of Appeal. It’s unlikely that a defence claim of a break in the causation between the original attack and the death of the victim would result in an acquittal, but there may be a question about whether the attacker would be convicted of murder or manslaughter.


78 b batter brutal ferocious


grotesque gruesome heartbreaking monstrous plummet plunge savage thump tragic vicious whack


Marked batter, thump, whack Murder


In English law, murder is considered the most serious form of homicide. For the crime of murder to be proved, the perpetrator must have intended to kill, or intended to cause serious injury where death is virtually certain to result. Following the abolition of the death penalty in 1965, the mandatory sentence for murder is life imprisonment.


There are a number of defences to a charge of murder, which can be termed mitigating circumstances. These include self-defence and provocation. There is also the defence of diminished responsibility which refers to the mental state of the accused at the time of the killing. A successful defence could lead to conviction on the lesser charge of manslaughter.


a


abolition homicide


involuntary justifiable malice manslaughter murder perpetrator provocation recklessly


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