R v Graham

Ratio Decidendi

ਤੱਥ

Graham, who was taking Valium for anxiety, lived in a ménage à trois with his wife and his lover, King, a violent man. King, who was jealous of the wife, put an electric flex around her neck and told Graham to pull the other end; Graham did so, and the wife was killed. Graham said he had acted out of fear of King, and raised the defence of duress at his trial for murder.

ਫੈਸਲੇ ਦਾ ਸਾਰ

The Court of Appeal, in a judgment given by Lord Lane CJ, upheld Graham's conviction for murder and, in doing so, laid down the modern two-stage test for the defence of duress. First (the subjective limb): was the defendant impelled to act as he did because, on the basis of what he reasonably believed the threatener had said or done, he had good cause to fear that otherwise he would be killed or caused serious physical injury? Second (the objective limb): would a sober person of reasonable firmness, sharing the defendant's relevant characteristics, have responded to the threats by acting as the defendant did? The threat must be of death or serious injury, and the response is judged against a person of reasonable firmness, so that a defendant who is unusually pliable or timid cannot rely on those traits. On the facts the jury had been entitled to reject the defence. The Graham test was later approved by the House of Lords in R v Howe and refined in R v Hasan.

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