Substantial Confusion within Diminished Responsibility?

摘要

On 2 April 2005, the appellant (R) met with the victim and killed him by strangulation. R then told his wife that he had kept gloves and a rope in his car and that he had used the rope from the car to kill the victim. After having been arrested, R gave a number of false accounts including a false alibi, and then sought to persuade a number of witnesses to give false evidence or change their statements, in an endeavour to escape conviction. After being charged with murder, R pleaded guilty to manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility under s. 2( 1) of the Homicide Act 1957. A successful pleading of the partial defence requires the following: at the time of the killing the defendant must have been suffering from an abnormality of the mind; the abnormality of the mind must have arisen from a condition of arrested or retarded development of the mind or any inherent causes or must have been induced by disease or injury; and the abnormality of the mind must have substantially impaired the defendant's mental responsibility for his acts or omissions in the commission of the fatal offence.