FLK2 · SQE1 module

Criminal Law and Practice

This subject combines substantive criminal law (the elements of specific offences and defences) with the procedure of a criminal case: charge, bail, disclosure, and the route to trial.

Fault element (mens rea) questions are the most common trap: two very similar fact patterns can produce different offences depending only on the defendant’s state of mind.

What this module covers

Every topic in Criminal Law and Practice, in the order the course teaches them. This is the whole syllabus for the module, not a selection.

Actus Reus, Mens Rea and Coincidence
Causation (Result Crimes)
Mens Rea: Intention, Recklessness, Negligence and Transferred Malice
Corporate Criminal Liability: Identification Doctrine, Failure-to-Prevent Offences and DPAs
Murder
Voluntary Manslaughter: Loss of Control and Diminished Responsibility
Involuntary Manslaughter: Unlawful Act and Gross Negligence
Common Assault: Assault and Battery
ABH (s.47), Wounding/GBH (s.20) and GBH with Intent (s.18)
Consent to Assault, ABH and GBH
Theft (Theft Act 1968 ss.1-6)
Robbery (Theft Act 1968 s.8)
Burglary and Aggravated Burglary (Theft Act 1968 ss.9-10)
Fraud (Fraud Act 2006 ss.2-4)
Criminal Damage, Aggravated Criminal Damage and Arson (Criminal Damage Act 1971)
General Defences: Self-Defence, Intoxication, Duress, Necessity, Consent and Insanity/Automatism
Inchoate Offences: Attempts and Encouraging/Assisting
Parties and Accessorial Liability
Police Station: Rights of a Detained Suspect (PACE 1984)
Custody Time Limits (PACE 1984 ss.41-44)
Identification Procedures (PACE Code D)
Bail (Bail Act 1976)
Classification of Offences, First Hearing, Plea Before Venue and Allocation
Disclosure (CPIA 1996)
Confessions and Exclusion of Evidence (PACE ss.76, 78)
Bad Character, Hearsay (CJA 2003) and Visual Identification (Turnbull)
Sentencing (Sentencing Act 2020)
Criminal Appeals
Youth Court Procedure
Trial Procedure: Witness Competence and Compellability, Special Measures and No Case to Answer
Welsh Language in Criminal Proceedings
Youth Sentencing: Referral Orders, YROs and DTOs

A real question from this module

Answer it before you decide

FLK2 · Criminal Law and Practice

Question

A defendant sets fire to a house to destroy insured contents, believing everyone inside has already left. In fact a resident is still asleep upstairs and dies in the fire. At trial, the defendant genuinely believed the house was empty, though a reasonable person in his position would have realised there was a high probability someone remained. Can the jury find that the defendant intended to kill?

ANo, because intention requires death to be a virtually certain result which the defendant himself foresaw as such

BYes, because foresight of a high probability of death is treated in law as equivalent to an intention to kill

CNo, because motive is irrelevant, and the defendant’s only motive here was insurance fraud, not killing

DYes, because a reasonable person in the defendant’s position would have foreseen the risk to the resident

ENo, because arson resulting in death is always properly charged as manslaughter rather than as murder itself

Answer A

The jury may find intention only where death or serious injury was a virtually certain result of the defendant’s act and the defendant himself appreciated that it was virtually certain, not merely where an objective, reasonable person would have foreseen a risk. Since the defendant genuinely believed the house was empty, the necessary subjective foresight is missing, so intention cannot be found on this route. Foresight of a high probability, short of virtual certainty, is not treated as legally equivalent to intention, and while motive is indeed irrelevant to whether intention exists, that principle does not itself supply the missing foresight.

R v Woollin [1999] 1 AC 82.

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