R v Martin (Anthony)

Facts

Martin lived alone in an isolated farmhouse which had been burgled several times. Two men entered the house at night. Martin fired a shotgun at them. One of the intruders, a teenager, was killed and the other was wounded.

History

Martin was convicted at the Crown Court of murder and of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, and sentenced to life imprisonment for murder. The jury rejected his defence of self-defence. He appealed to the Court of Appeal and sought to adduce fresh psychiatric evidence.

Issue

Whether the jury had been correctly directed on self-defence, in particular whether Martin's psychiatric condition was relevant to the reasonableness of the force he used, and whether the fresh psychiatric evidence made the murder conviction unsafe by reason of diminished responsibility.

Held

The appeal against the murder conviction was allowed on the ground of diminished responsibility, and a conviction for manslaughter was substituted. The court otherwise held that the jury had been correctly directed on self-defence.

Ratio

• In self-defence the question is whether the force used was reasonable in the circumstances as the defendant honestly believed them to be, and the reasonableness is assessed objectively; a defendant's psychiatric condition is not relevant to that assessment unless it caused him to believe that circumstances existed which did not.
• Fresh psychiatric evidence that the defendant suffered from a paranoid personality disorder at the time of the shooting could found diminished responsibility, and justified substituting manslaughter for murder.

The judgments

Key reasoning

• The jury, properly directed, were entitled on the evidence to find that the force used was more than was reasonable in the circumstances and so to reject self-defence.
• Reasonableness is an objective standard, and it is not to be tailored to the defendant's personal characteristics, though a mistaken belief about the facts, if honest, is taken into account.
• The new medical evidence was admissible as it was not available at trial, and it was capable of establishing that Martin's mental functioning was substantially impaired by an abnormality of mind, so that the murder conviction was unsafe.

Obiter

• The court recognised that a delusional belief about the danger faced could in principle be relevant to self-defence, but said that the evidence of Martin's personality disorder went only to his responsiveness, not to a specific false belief.

Where it fits in the module

Martin belongs in general defences as a striking case on the relationship between self-defence and diminished responsibility. It raises the question of how the criminal law should treat a defendant who uses disproportionate force because of a mental condition. It is also used in debates on the right of householders to use force against intruders and the limits on mistaken belief.

Criticisms

• Treating a mental disorder as irrelevant to the reasonableness of force, while allowing it to reduce murder to manslaughter, produces an all or nothing approach under which a defendant cannot be acquitted despite acting on an honestly perceived threat.
• The shift of the issue to diminished responsibility stigmatises the defendant as abnormal, while his claim is that he acted in justified defence of himself and his home.
• The decision leaves unclear the line between a delusion that counts as a mistaken belief in self-defence and a heightened sensitivity that is excluded.