R v Lamb

Ratio Decidendi

Hechos

Lamb, in jest and with no intention of harming anyone, pointed a loaded revolver at his best friend. Both of them treated it as a joke and neither believed the gun would fire, because although there were bullets in two chambers of the rotating cylinder, neither was opposite the barrel. Lamb did not appreciate that pulling the trigger would rotate the cylinder and bring a live round into firing position; he pulled the trigger, the gun fired, and his friend was killed.

Resumen de la sentencia

The Court of Appeal quashed Lamb's conviction for unlawful act (constructive) manslaughter. For that offence the prosecution must prove that the defendant committed an unlawful and dangerous act; the 'unlawful act' relied on here was assault. But there was no assault: an assault requires that the victim apprehend immediate unlawful violence, and Lamb's friend, who treated the pointing of the gun as a joke and did not believe it would fire, apprehended no violence at all. Since there was no unlawful act, the basis for constructive manslaughter fell away. The court also observed that the trial judge had misdirected the jury by suggesting the mere pointing of the gun could ground liability without the necessary mens rea, and that any question of gross-negligence manslaughter would have required a proper direction on negligence, which had not been given. The case is a standard authority that constructive manslaughter requires a genuinely unlawful act, not merely a dangerous or careless one.

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