The common law partial defence of provocation for murder was abolished and replaced by a new defence, loss of control, in the Coroners and Justice Act 2009. The thesis evaluates the reform with an analytical approach by looking at its success in resolving the problems identified with the pre-2009 law, in particular the defence being used as a platform for male violence against women and victims of domestic violence and abuse struggling to rely on the defence, and, also, looking at how the key areas of the defence are dealt with and how they ought to be framed: rationale, definition of provocation, objective element and subjective element. Through evaluating the reform many aspects are found to be deficient, including the retention of the loss of self-control concept and the sexual infidelity exclusion, and a proposal is set out which is seeks to address the main problems and make the defence effective. Specifically, two measures are advanced which tackle key concerns: a reliance on contextual evidence to support the defence in cases where the defendant was the victim of domestic violence and the use of presumptions against provoked killers in order to restrict the defence.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:669088 |
| Date | January 2015 |
| Creators | Powell, Jonathan |
| Publisher | University of Birmingham |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/6291/ |
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