Lesser charge
So if a guy gets really mad at his wife because she says she’s leaving him for another man, then it’s not murder when he kills her, it’s manslaughter. He was really pissed off, you see.
Jonathon Cudworth, 36, of Northbourne, near Deal in Kent, was cleared of murder but found guilty of manslaughter at Canterbury Crown Court.
During the trial, jurors heard Cudworth killed Polish-born Mariola, known as Mijka, because he feared she was going to leave him for another man.
Judge Adele Williams told Cudworth it was a “brutal, callous killing”.
When Cudworth gave evidence, he told jurors the couple had argued after she was late home from work, he grabbed her by the neck to stop her pushing him and then picked up a knife and stabbed her.
Then he hid the body and reported her missing.
After the hearing, Det Insp Richard Vickery said the killing was “a senseless act on an innocent woman”.
He said the families involved had been through an incredibly emotional ordeal because of Cudworth’s actions, not least because he refused to reveal where he had disposed of her body.
But he was really really pissed off, you see.
… unless the law there is *very* different from the US, that’s second degree murder at best. Stabbing someone with a knife isn’t an accident. Manslaughter is for when you weren’t trying to kill someone– either it was entirely an accident (oops, I didn’t see that pedestrian), or what you did was an act of minor violence that went bad in a way you couldn’t control. Like punching someone in a fight on a river bank and they tumble over and drown, or striking someone with a blunt instrument that by chance hits a vital area at the right angle.
You don’t accidentally hold someone and stab them because you’re angry.
Furthermore, hiding the body and reporting her missing seems to me to damage the case for second degree rather than first.
So the basic idea is that her behavior partially justified her death. As noted by Samantha, manslaughter in this case means intentional injury leading to accidental death. So, the only crime here in the eyes of this court was that the injury shouldn’t have lead to death… with to me implies that the court believes injury sans death to be reasonable if your partner is making you angry.
Remind me why the conservative christian crowd objects to sharia law again? It seems to me they already have a de facto equivalent.
Ah, the (partial) defense of provocation. I remember it well, though not fondly, as I served on a jury in 2008 in a murder trial which this defense was claimed. The jury found the accused guilty of murder. While what went on in the jury room cannot be discussed, I can say that I found it a very difficult defense to consider. Luckily (in my view) the defense of provocation was dropped from New Zealand law a few years later, largely I think as a result of the bad press it got from this case (not the one on which I served):
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/2664780/Sophies-legacy-Provocation-to-be-scrapped
Samantha – I agree with your assessment of murder versus manslaughter, but the history of this sort of thing goes back a long way. In the very early 1970 s I had a cousin who was killed by her husband. They had an argument in a bar. He went home, got his gun, came back and killed her. Clearly murder. He was convicted of manslaughter and served 5 years. Then he petitioned to get his children back from their grandparents (my uncle) and the court saw no reason to prevent him from having the children.
Somehow I had the crazy hope things had gotten better. Why would they? Women are no more valuable now than they were 40+ years ago.
Off-post, but it looks like stuff is finally going down in Oregon.
It was manslaughter because the court found he did not intend to kill her. That’s just the law, for men or women. Nothing to do with provocation.
Ah, the (partial) defense of provocation.
There is no defence of provocation in UK law, although they may claim tempororary loss of control.
Pinkeen, where did you find the information that the court found he did not intend to kill her? The article quoted in the OP doesn’t state it.
From what I see, you cannot reach such a conclusion from the verdict alone. It’s not that simple, because on UK law, a manslaughter *can* be voluntary. From Wikipedia:
It accords with your observation in the next comment that “they may claim tempororary loss of control”. Indeed, it seems that this is what actually happened in this case. See here.
Still, I’m at a loss to understand how they could do it. See the discussion of the notion of a “qualifying trigger” here, especially the following two fragments:
I’m afraid it takes someone wiser than me to explain the reasoning behind the verdict.
Pinkeen, generally if you stab someone to death in anger, it is considered murder because murder does not have to be premeditated.
The article does not say on what grounds he was cleared of murder. There are a number of possibilities.
Samantha – UK law is very different in this respect because there is no second-degree murder. Manslaughter is a catch-all category for homicides that don’t qualify as murder for various reasons. As Pinkeen says, the defense of provocation has been reformed to loss of control. That brings it down to manslaughter as does diminished responsibility (a mental health defence with less stringent conditions than insanity). Another possibility is that he did not form the intent required (the facts as described make this seem unlikely but we were not given much information)
Before criticising legal cases it’s important to know the facts. Media reports are often very misleading.
Ariel, I think for there to be mens rea in a manslaughter case the accused would have to be in a state of diminished responsibility. The paradigmatic case for this is a woman who has been systematically abused over time and then ‘snaps’ and kills her abuser. In this particular case it is much more likely that he was found to be temporarily out of control. I don’t know the circumstances but juries are good at this sort of thing usually and court cases are rarely how they appear in the papers. He may still get a life sentence for the crime (likely given the aggravating circs of hiding the body). What shouldn’t be read into this is any suggestion that murdering women is taken likely by the UK courts or as less serious than murdering men. If anything, the reverse is the case.
I understood (see the third of the links I provided earlier) that the loss of control defence applies exactly in mens rea cases, with the possibility of changing the qualification from murder to voluntary manslaughter. If this is so, the disjunction you’ve just presented is not valid. Admittedly, I’m not a lawyer, so if I’m wrong about this, then … well, then I’m wrong.
Yes, I’m also very cautious with opinions about the court cases – no quarrel here.