Chapter 18

MURDER AND MANSLAUGHTER.

187. Manslaughter.

(1) Any person who by an unlawful act or omission causes the death of another person commits the felony termed manslaughter. (2) An unlawful omission is an omission amounting to culpable negligence to discharge a duty tending to the preservation of life or health, whether such omission is or is not accompanied by an intention to cause death or bodily harm.

188. Murder.

Any person who of malice aforethought causes the death of another person by an unlawful act or omission commits murder.

189. Punishment of murder.

Any person convicted of murder shall be sentenced to death.

190. Punishment of manslaughter.

Any person who commits the felony of manslaughter is liable to imprisonment for life.

191. Malice aforethought.

Malice aforethought shall be deemed to be established by evidence providing either of the following circumstances—

(a) an intention to cause the death of any person, whether such person is the person actually killed or not; or

(b) knowledge that the act or omission causing death will probably cause the death of some person, whether such person is the person actually killed or not, although such knowledge is accompanied by indifference whether death is caused or not, or by a wish that it may not be caused.

192. Killing on provocation.

When a person who unlawfully kills another under circumstances which, but for this section, would constitute murder, does the act which causes death in the heat of passion caused by sudden provocation as defined in section 193, and before there is time for his or her passion to cool, he or she commits manslaughter only.

193. Provocation defined.

(1) “Provocation” means and includes, except as stated in subsections (3) to (5), any wrongful act or insult of such a nature as to be likely— (a) when done or offered to an ordinary person; or (b) when done or offered in the presence of an ordinary person to another person— (i) who is under his or her immediate care; or (ii) to whom he or she stands in a conjugal, parental, filial or fraternal relation, or in the relation of master and servant, to deprive him or her of the power of self-control and to induce him or her to commit an assault of the kind which the person charged committed upon the person by whom the act or insult is done or offered. (2) When such an act or insult is done or offered by one person— (a) to another; or (b) in the presence of another to a person— (i) who is under the immediate care of that other; or (ii) to whom that other stands in any such relation as aforesaid, the former is said to give to that other provocation for an assault. (3) A lawful act is not provocation to any person for an assault. (4) An act which a person does in consequence of incitement given by another person in order to induce him or her to do the act and thereby to furnish an excuse for committing an assault is not provocation to that other person for an assault. (5) An arrest which is unlawful is not necessarily provocation for an assault, but it may be evidence of provocation to a person who knows of the illegality.

194. Diminished responsibility.

(1) Where a person is found guilty of the murder or of being a party to the murder of another, and the court is satisfied that he or she was suffering from such abnormality of mind, whether arising from a condition of arrested or retarded development of mind, or any inherent causes or induced by disease or injury, as substantially impaired his or her mental responsibility for his or her acts and omissions in doing or being a party to the murder, the court shall make a special finding to the effect that the accused was guilty of murder but with diminished responsibility.

(2) On a charge of murder, it shall be for the defence to prove that the person charged was suffering from such abnormality of mind as is mentioned in subsection (1).

(3) Where a special finding is made under subsection (1), the court shall not sentence the person convicted to death but shall order him or her to be detained in safe custody; and section 105 of the Trial on Indictments Act shall apply as if the order had been made under that section.

(4) The fact that one party to a murder is by virtue of this section not liable to be sentenced to death shall not affect the question whether any other party to it shall be sentenced to death.

195. Suicide pacts.

(1) It shall be manslaughter and shall not be murder for a person acting in pursuance of a suicide pact between him or her and another to kill the other or be a party to the other killing himself or herself or being killed by a third person.

(2) Where it is shown that a person charged with the murder of another killed the other or was a party to the other’s killing himself or herself or being killed, it shall be for the defence to prove that the person charged was acting in pursuance of a suicide pact between him or her and the other.

(3) For the purposes of this section, “suicide pact” means a common agreement between two or more persons having for its object the death of all of them, whether or not each is to take his or her own life, but nothing done by a person who enters into a suicide pact shall be treated as done by him or her in pursuance of the pact unless it is done while he or she has the settled intention of dying in pursuance of the pact.

196. Causing death defined.

A person is deemed to have caused the death of another person although his or her act is not the immediate or sole cause of death in any of the following cases—

(a) if he or she inflicts bodily injury on another person in consequence of which that person undergoes surgical or medical treatment which causes death. In this case it is immaterial whether the treatment was proper or mistaken, if it was employed in good faith and with common knowledge and skill; but the person inflicting the injury is not deemed to have caused the death if the treatment which was its immediate cause was not employed in good faith or was so employed without common knowledge or skill;

(b) if he or she inflicts a bodily injury on another which would not have caused death if the injured person had submitted to proper surgical or medical treatment or had observed proper precautions as to his or her mode of living;

(c) if by actual or threatened violence he or she causes such other person to perform an act which causes the death of such person, such act being a means of avoiding such violence which in the circumstances would appear natural to the person whose death is so caused;

(d) if by any act or omission he or she hastened the death of a person suffering under any disease or injury which apart from such act or omission would have caused death;

(e) if his or her act or omission would not have caused death unless it had been accompanied by an act or omission of the person killed or of other persons.

197. When child deemed a person.

A child becomes a person capable of being killed when it has completely proceeded in a living state from the body of its mother, whether it has breathed or not, and whether it has an independent circulation or not, and whether the navel string is severed or not.

198. Limitation as to time of death.

(1) A person is not deemed to have killed another if the death of that person does not take place within a year and a day of the cause of death.

(2) Such period is reckoned inclusive of the day on which the last unlawful act contributing to the cause of death was done, and when the cause of death is an omission to observe or perform a duty, the period is reckoned inclusive of the day on which the omission ceased.

(3) When the cause of death is in part an unlawful act and in part an omission to observe or perform a duty, the period is reckoned inclusive of the day on which the last unlawful act was done or the day on which the omission ceased, whichever is the later