ABSTRACT
If a clinician is suspected by the police of gross negligence manslaughter the point will be reached where, in England and Wales, the Crown Prosecution Service must make a decision as to whether the clinician should be charged with this crime. If charged, the accused will stand trial, unless they plead guilty. One of the key factors in making this decision is whether there is ‘a realistic prospect of conviction’, in other words, whether the court is more likely than not to convict. Medical experts provide the court with an opinion as to whether care was substandard. But the issue of whether substandard care (‘negligence’) amounts to gross negligence is a matter for the jury alone. The legal basis for prosecution and conviction for gross negligence manslaughter has arguably failed to provide prosecutors, judges and juries with sufficient certainty as to what constitutes the offence in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries.
