R -v- Clinton, Parker and Evans
England and Wales Court of Appeal (Criminal Division)
Neutral citation number (2012) EWCA Crim 2.
Judgment was delivered by the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, on January 17th, 2012, Mr Justice Henriques and Mrs Justice Gloster concurring.
Judgment
The law relating to a new partial defence to murder, “loss of control”, cannot wholly exclude sexual infidelity as a trigger from consideration as a partial defence to a charge of murder. The Court of Appeal upheld the appeal against conviction of Mr Clinton, but rejected the other two.
Background
Three men, Jon-Jacques Clinton, Stephen Parker and Dewi Evans had killed their wives in various circumstances, were convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. The former was also convicted of arson. All three had pleaded a “loss of control” defence.
In Mr Clinton’s case the trial judge ruled there was insufficient evidence to put the “loss of control” defence to the jury. In the other two cases the jury rejected it. Mr Clinton also argued diminished responsibility.
Mr Clinton and his wife had lived together for 16 years and had two children. Two weeks before her death Mrs Clinton left the family home in what was described as a trial separation. They continued to spend time together as a family. The day before her death she told her husband she was having an affair.
Later that day her 4x4 was stolen from outside her parents’ home and afterwards found burnt out.
The next day Mr Clinton was contacted by the police about it, and he arranged for his wife to come to the family home to collect insurance documents. During the morning he searched websites dealing with suicide and consumed drink and drugs.
Mrs Clinton was dropped off at the house at about 2pm by her mother who, when she returned about two hours later, found the curtains drawn and the house barricaded. She called the police, who broke in and found Mrs Clinton’s body.
She had been beaten around the head and strangled, and photographs of her almost naked body sent to the man with whom she was having the affair. Mr Clinton was found in the loft with a noose around his neck. His voice was slurred and he said he had taken drugs.
He was charged with her murder and pleaded guilty to manslaughter but not to murder on the basis either of “loss of control” or of “diminished responsibility”.
In his evidence, he said that on the day she died, his wife was behaving in an uncharacteristic way and appeared angry. She described graphically sex with other men, and said he didn’t “have the f . . . . . g bollocks” to kill himself and that he could have the children, who were then living with him in the family home. He said he heard a noise, like the distant sea and wanted everything to stop. He attacked her with a piece of wood.
At the conclusion of the evidence, the trial judge said there was no evidence the loss of self-control necessary for the purposes of a defence to a charge of murders was due to one of the qualifying triggers identified in the statute. She said she could not see that the circumstances were of an extremely grave character or that they would cause the defendant to have a justifiable sense of being seriously wronged.
She told the jury specifically to ignore what the wife had allegedly said about her sexual infidelity. However, she allowed the defence of diminished responsibility go to the jury.
Decision
In October 2010 the old common law defence of provocation, reducing murder to manslaughter, was abolished and was replaced by sections 54 and 55 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009, which created a new partial defence to murder, “loss of control”.
In order to mount this defence the defendant must show that his or her acts of omissions causing the death resulted from a loss of control; that this loss of control had a qualifying trigger, and that a similar person with a normal degree of tolerance and self-restraint would have reacted in a similar manner.
A “qualifying trigger” included circumstances of an extremely grave character causing the defendant to have a justifiable sense of being seriously wronged along with a fear of serious violence, if such violence was not deliberately incited by the defendant. The legislation stated that the circumstances did not include sexual infidelity.
Lord Justice Judge said the Court of Appeal concluded the trial judge misdirected herself about the possible relevance of the wife’s infidelity.
“We have reflected whether the totality of the matters relied on as a qualifying trigger, evaluated in the context of the evidence relating to the wife’s sexual infidelity, and examined as a cohesive whole, were of sufficient weight to leave to the jury. In our judgment they were.”
Accordingly, they allowed the appeal against conviction and ordered a new trial, where the issues would be examined by a jury.
The full judgment is on www.judiciary.gov.uk/media/judgments/2012/r-v-clinton-parker-evans-judgment