ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to set out the current law of partial defences in Scotland and offers some necessarily tentative hypotheses as to why they have been attended with little controversy. The main objection which may be offered to it is that it threatened inexorably to undermine the general Scottish approach to mistake of fact in defences, which Scots law has consistently required to be based on reasonable grounds. There are two well-known instances where a murder prosecution was pursued, but in one of those the jury accepted a plea of self-defence. The chapter focuses on the current law of partial defences in Scotland and explains why these have been relatively uncontroversial in this jurisdiction. But even if the current law is operating satisfactorily in terms of the outcomes arrived at in particular cases, the law as it stands is overly reliant on the benign exercise of prosecutorial discretion.
