R v Burgess

Facts

The defendant and the complainant, a friend, were watching videos at her flat when he fell asleep. During the night he struck her on the head with a wine bottle and the base of a video recorder and gripped her by the throat. The defendant said that he had been asleep and had no recollection of what he did, and medical evidence supported a diagnosis of a sleep disorder.

History

The defendant was charged with wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm. The trial judge ruled that the defence of automatism raised by the evidence amounted in law to a defence of insanity, and the jury returned a special verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity. The defendant appealed against that verdict, which the Court of Appeal dismissed.

Issue

Whether the condition of the defendant, an episode of sleepwalking in which he acted without awareness, was a non-insane automatism leading to an acquittal, or insane automatism arising from a disease of the mind within the McNaghten Rules.

Held

Appeal dismissed. The defect of reason, if any, arose from an internal factor, a disorder of sleep, and so was a disease of the mind within the McNaghten Rules, so that the special verdict was correct.

Ratio

• Disease of the mind in the McNaghten Rules covers any mental disorder which has manifested itself in violence and is prone to recur, and it includes an impairment of the mind arising from an internal cause, whether organic or functional, permanent or transient.
• Sleepwalking, as a malfunctioning of the mind caused by an internal factor, comes within this definition, so that a defendant whose acts are explained by it should receive the special verdict rather than an acquittal.

Key reasoning

• The court applied the distinction in Quick [1973] QB 910 between a malfunctioning of the mind caused by an external factor, such as a blow or a drug, which leads to non-insane automatism, and one caused by an internal factor, which is insane automatism.
• The court rejected the argument that the cause of the condition was external because it was a state of sleep, a normal condition, and treated the sleepwalking as the product of an internal disorder.
• The court treated the risk of recurrence and the need to protect the public as supporting the classification of the condition as a disease of the mind.

Where it fits in the module

In the Incapacity and General Defences topic the case is used to test the relationship between automatism and insanity, and the way in which the legal definition of disease of the mind departs from the medical one. It raises the question whether the law of insanity is a sensible home for conditions such as sleepwalking, epilepsy and diabetes.

Criticisms

• Treating sleepwalking as insanity gives the defendant a label of insanity that does not reflect the medical position, and discourages defendants from raising a defence that would otherwise lead to an acquittal.
• The internal and external test produces arbitrary distinctions, since the same involuntary state may be treated differently depending on whether its cause is classed as inside or outside the defendant.
• At the time of the decision the special verdict led to compulsory admission to hospital, a harsh and disproportionate outcome for what may be a harmless sleep disorder.