Attempted murder?

AJ101 wrote:

The jury got it right as well [...]she got a guilty

Now we just have to wait for the shockingly inadequate sentence. My bet is on for no custodial sentence, just an easily-affordable fine (she's not poor by any measure) and maybe 15 minutes of community service, plus an insultingly short ban (about 18 months).

On the plus side, a guilty verdict means the victims can easily and probably successfully sue her pants off.

mrmo wrote:

The simple problem is the law is about intent, not about the outcome. Basically, as i understand it, if you intend to kill, murder, if you don't, manslaughter. I do think that driving offences need to be looked at though. If someone uses a car or a kitchen knife, if the outcome is the same and the intent the same then should the crime also not be the same?

Well, no, it's about intent *and* outcome. Hence if you deliberately killed someone you'd probably face a murder charge, but if you loused it up and only injured them, you'd be up for an assault charge like ABH/GBH plus potentially attempted murder.

As to the car vs kitchen knife question, the answer is "yes". And, where intent can be shown, assault charges tend to be applied. The tricky bit is arguably that intent is a little hard to prove, but also that intent is genuinely uncommon: in the context of fatal stabbings, it's pretty much all assault rather than people being rubbish at making a bolognese sauce, whereas with fatal road collisions it's pretty much all people being rubbish at driving to work rather than assault. Personally I think our driving offences have many flaws, but broadly speaking I don't think the matter of intent is one of them.

shay cycles wrote:

The charges are correct. Assuming the allegations are correct (the jury will decide that) then it is clear that she intended to harm the victim; only if she had intended to kill him would it be attempted murder. Unlike dangerous vs careless driving this is an area where our laws are fairly clear in the UK.

The law may be clear, but frankly it has no useful meaning. How do you, I or anybody know whether she intended to hurt the cyclist or to kill him?

She drove a car at someone, sufficiently quickly to do serious damage to a building, her own car, and another vehicle. Whether that proves evidence of 'intention' to hurt the cyclist badly or to kill him is unknowable, and to most of us non-lawyers, utterly uninteresting. Labels don't matter - what does is that this woman receive significant punishment and be prevented from ever driving again.

oldstrath wrote:

Whether that proves evidence of 'intention' to hurt the cyclist badly or to kill him is unknowable

I think what you meant to say was "Whether she intended to hurt the cyclist badly or to kill him is unknowable", which would be correct. Whether the evidence proves (subject to its legal definition, ie "beyond reasonable doubt") intent *is* knowable, and this is precisely the objective of a trial.

The "labels" do matter, because they're not labels. The proving of intent to harm has different criteria to proving intent to kill, and also has different consequences. If someone punched you, you couldn't just accuse them of attempting to murder you, and quite rightly so.

Bez wrote:

If someone punched you, you couldn't just accuse them of attempting to murder you, and quite rightly so.

Conversely, if you accidentally kill someone because, I don't know, let's think of something innocuous... You are playing cricket and you slog the ball way up in the air and it comes down on a fielder's head and kills them stone dead... Then that's not murder and should not be treated as such.

All these incidences where people end up dead by accident, or on purpose, or injured when someone was trying to injure them, or trying to kill them, or not trying to do anything at all, or whatever, occupy a huge expanse of grey, which is what we need a legal sysem for.

vonhelmet wrote:

Bez wrote:

If someone punched you, you couldn't just accuse them of attempting to murder you, and quite rightly so.

Conversely, if you accidentally kill someone because, I don't know, let's think of something innocuous... You are playing cricket and you slog the ball way up in the air and it comes down on a fielder's head and kills them stone dead... Then that's not murder and should not be treated as such.

All these incidences where people end up dead by accident, or on purpose, or injured when someone was trying to injure them, or trying to kill them, or not trying to do anything at all, or whatever, occupy a huge expanse of grey, which is what we need a legal sysem for.

With respect, neither punching someone, nor hitting them accidentally with a ballistic cricket ball, is very like deliberately driving an Audi Q7 at them. Which is both deliberate, as in the punch, and has a high probability of resulting in death, as in the striking cricket ball. I fully accept that such actions are not attempted murder according to the law, I just still don't really understand why not.

It's all about having the specific intention to cause death by your actions.

So did the driver of the Audi specifically intend to kill the cyclist by their actions? If so, then attempt murder as the cyclist wasn't killed. Jury to decide on intent by considering all the evidence presented.

If not, then a more appropriate charge would be GBH - Sec 18 - To cause someone grievous injury by their actions, with the specific intent to cause that person grievous injury. A good example is a glassing in a pub where someone is blinded or running someone over who is on a bike. However, if that person then died of their injuries sometime later, because of the specific intent element, a murder charge could be considered. The definition of murder is - with specific intent to kill or cause grievous bodily harm (GBH).

If you were setting out all along with the specific intent to kill, then a murder charge would be the one, if the person died as a result of their injuries. If not, we're back to attempt murder.