Ali's Liability for Murder (Other (Not Listed) Sample)

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Title: Ali's liability for murder
Subject: Criminal law
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This paper intends to establish whether Ali is liable of the deaths of Steve and Dana by examining whether the requirements of criminal law in relation to criminal liability have been met to warrant Ali’s criminal liability. Under criminal law jurisprudence, the existence of criminal liability is only justified if a person who has been accused of having committed a criminal act is found to have both the mens rea and actus reus. Mens rea is simply the the guilty mind while actus reus is described as the actual criminal act. For one to be guilty of a criminal act, these two elements must be proved. If one of the above elements is not satisfied criminal liability cannot be established.[N Lacey ,C Wells,& O Quick ,Reconstructing Criminal Law: Text and Materials ( 1st Edition ,Cambridge University Press 2003 )60]
To establish Ali’s criminal liability as a result of the deaths of both Steve and Dana, it is important that mens rea and actus reus be established. As pertains to the actus reus in the current case scenario, Ali can possibly be blamed for committing an act that led to Steve’s death as well as contributing to Dana’s suicide. Nonetheless, the actual actus reus is hard to prove in the current case scenario as the acts leading to the deaths of both Steve and Dana do not constitute to sufficient actus reus on the part of Ali. As a matter of fact, criminal liability must accrue out of the coexistence of the above elements.[Reconstructing Criminal Law( n 1 above)]
For instance, if A conceives the idea of killing B on a Monday but accidentally runs over B on a Tuesday, A is not guilty of murder. That being the case, Ali cannot be said to have committed the two murders as he did not actually commit acts that led to the actual deaths of the two. The only evidence that can be used against him is a mere feeling of hate towards Steve and the excitement of inheriting the property of his wife. The fire that led to the unfortunate incident was accidentally cased by Ali and was never intended to kill Steve. In fact, leaving Steve to burn in the club was only an afterthought .Ali felt that it was a good opportunity for him to let Steve burn inside the burning club at the time of accident. This feeling and taking advantage of the fire leaves Ali with enough mens rea as intention to kill can be traced. His decision to let Steve burn constitutes an intention to kill which can be used against him assuming Steve died in the fire. In Hyam v DPP [1975] AC 55 the defendant was found to possess sufficient mens rea for committing murder for committing an act that she had foreseen that would cause grievous bodily harm. In the present scenario, Ali left Steve to burn in the club an act that exposed Steve to a probable danger of burning to death which was in fact the reason behind him leaving Steve in the burning club.[J O'riordan, A2 law for OCR (1 edn, Oxford, Heinemann Educational 2003)]
According to the facts presented in the present case scenario, Steve did not die in the fire but his cause of death was purely due to the negligence of the para-medic who attended him. Steve’s death is therefore as a result of medical negligence as opposed to the fire caused by Ali.
A rational argument that Ali’s action of leaving Steve to burn in the club contributed to his death as he could not have been exposed to medical negligence if Ali had not left him in the danger of burning would seem to hold Ali liable for Steve’s death. In California v Lewis (1899) (California), the defendant short his the victim causing him a band wound which could have worsened with time. The victim later cut his own throat leading to his own death. It was held that the defendant was still guilty of manslaughter even though the as shooting the victim remained an operative substantial cause of death. What would expel this kind of argument is the real cause of fire. The fire was due to accident as opposed to intentional setting of the said fire. The concept of operative substantial cause would therefore prove to be difficult to sustain.[J O’riordan(n 3 above)]
Ali’s criminal liability in Dana’s suicide cannot be justified due to the following reasons. In crimes relating to suicide, one can only be guilty of encouraging suicide or committing a suicide pact. UK law provides under section 2 of the Suicide Act 1961 that a person is guilty of an offense if it can be proved that he or she has acted in a manner that of encourages or aids another to commit suicide. It is also an offence if one is found to have committed an act that amounts to an attempted suicide of another party, and that act was projected to promote or assist suicide. Under the UK law, this offence is known as encouraging or assisting suicide.[Director of Public Prosecutions Cpsgovuk, '' (Cpsgovuk,/publications/prosecution/assisted_suicide_policy.html accessed 8 ...