R v Watson

Facts

Watson and another man burgled the home of an elderly man, aged 87, who was frail. The householder was woken by the noise, and the two men abused him verbally before leaving. About an hour and a half later he died of a heart attack. The medical evidence did not clearly show that the death was caused by the shock of the burglary rather than natural causes.

History

Watson was convicted of manslaughter at trial and appealed to the Court of Appeal against that conviction.

Issue

Whether a burglar whose conduct was an unlawful act could be guilty of manslaughter when the householder died of a heart attack, and in particular what knowledge is attributed to the sober and reasonable bystander for the dangerousness test, and whether the jury was properly directed on causation.

Held

Appeal allowed and the manslaughter conviction quashed. The jury had not been properly directed on what the bystander would have realised once the defendant saw the frailty of the victim, and the causal link between the burglary and the death was not clear on the medical evidence.

Ratio

• In unlawful act manslaughter the act must be one that all sober and reasonable people would recognise as likely to subject another to the risk of some harm. The bystander is credited with the knowledge that the defendant had or gained while the unlawful act continued, so the test is not confined to what could be seen at the moment of entry.
• If the defendant came to know of the vulnerability of the victim during the continuing unlawful act, the bystander is treated as sharing that knowledge, and it is for the jury to decide whether the act, in those circumstances, was dangerous in the required sense and whether it caused the death.

The judgments

Key reasoning

• Earlier authority required the unlawful act to be dangerous in the sense that a sober and reasonable person would foresee the risk of some physical harm, and not necessarily serious harm.
• The dangerousness of the act can be assessed in the light of facts that become apparent while the unlawful act is still going on, so a defendant who realises he is dealing with a frail person is judged accordingly.
• Where the evidence does not clearly show that the unlawful act caused the death, the jury must be directed to decide causation and the conviction is unsafe if they have not been.

Where it fits in the module

In the Homicide topic the case belongs to the debate about constructive liability: the requirements of an unlawful and dangerous act and whether it is acceptable to convict of manslaughter for a death that the defendant did not foresee. The case tests the objective dangerousness requirement from Church and Dawson and shows how a subjective element enters through the knowledge of the defendant. Earlier cases such as Larkin and Goodfellow, later cases such as Kennedy (No 2), and the debate on reform, fall to be considered with it.

Criticisms

• The test mixes an objective standard with the actual knowledge of the defendant, so liability for a serious offence can turn on what the defendant happened to see rather than on what he foresaw.
• Unlawful act manslaughter allows conviction for homicide on the basis of a lesser offence such as burglary even when the defendant did not intend or foresee serious harm, which conflicts with the principle that fault should be correspondingly related to the harm caused.
• The reasoning on timing is contestable: attributing to the bystander facts learned during a continuing act makes the cut-off point artificial and the outcome difficult to predict.