ABSTRACT
The offence of murder is the most serious of criminal offences and attracts a mandatory life sentence upon conviction. It is associated with some of the most notorious names in the annals of crime: Dr Crippen, Peter Sutcliffe, Dennis Nielsen and Dr Harold Shipman to name but a few. It may, therefore, seem odd that murder is still defined through a whole series of common law decisions that have occurred over the years. There is, for example, no Murder Act in this country. Contrary to popular misconception, s.1 of the Homicide Act 1957 does not define murder. The Act mainly deals with a number of special defences that can be pleaded to the charge. To discover the law of murder you have to trace its evolution through a series of important judgments in decided cases since the seventeenth century, culminating in the House of Lords decision in Woollin (1998). As with other offences it is essential to appreciate the elements of actus reus and mens rea that constitute the offence.
