Criminal Law—Appeal—Court of Criminal Appeal of Victoria—Murder—Defence of insanity—Supported by expert evidence—Charge to jury—Explanation to jury of expert evidence in relation to M'Naghten Rules—Onus of proof—Contrast between onus upon Crown and onus upon accused to establish insanity—Powers of Court of Criminal Appeal of Victoria to quash sentence and verdict when it appears that accused was insane when he committed the offence of &hich he stands convicted—Crimes Act 1958 (No. 6231) (Vict.), ss. 568, 569 (4).
Decision
November 8. The COURT delivered the following written judgment:- This is an application for special leave to appeal from an order of the Full Court of the Supreme Court of Victoria refusing the applicant leave to appeal from a conviction for murder. The decision was that of a majority of the Court, Herring C.J. and Gavan Duffy J., Monahan J. dissenting. (at p662)
2. On 23rd December 1959 the prisoner killed a woman named Myrtle Bourke by stabbing her with a knife which he took from some place in the kitchen where they were at the time. It was the kitchen of a house in Fitzroy Street, Fitzroy, where he dwelt. She lived some doors up the street. They had become acquainted and had established a sexual association. For present purposes it is unnecessary to go into the circumstances of the sordid life they led or indeed to give an account of the detailed facts of the case. (at p662)
3. He left her on the kitchen floor and went off to the police station. Ultimately he signed a written statement recounting what had occurred. This showed a clear enough perception of the course of events but there was much in it to arouse suspicion as to his sanity and as to the reality of some of the more or less trivial actions he ascribed to the dead woman. At his trial his defence was insanity. The defence was supported by three physicians, psychiatrists, who were called for the prisoner. No evidence was called by the Crown in rebuttal. The three physicians were of high qualification and experience ; two were government officers whose work lay at the psychiatric clinic at Pentridge Prison. They had investigated the prisoner's condition for the Authorities. The third was a specialist in private practice. All three physicians deposed to the opinion that the prisoner suffered from a disease or disorder of the mind, namely paranoiac schizophrenia, as a result of which he had stabbed the woman. They considered that in consequence of this disease or disorder he had no appreciation of the wrongness of his act and they went as far as saying that it might well be that he had not a full or sufficient appreciation of the nature and quality of his act. The latter view was put by the witnesses on grounds that were not identical but one of…
Grounds of appeal
[14] The appellant contends that the primary judge erred in finding that the respondent had discharged the onus of establishing the matters required under the relevant provision.
[15] It was submitted that his Honour failed to give adequate weight to the evidence of the second witness, and that the findings of fact were not reasonably open on the material before the Court.
[16] The respondent, for its part, submits that no error is disclosed, and that the conclusions reached were well within the range of outcomes available to the primary judge.
Consideration
[17] It is convenient to deal first with the question of construction, as the resolution of that issue informs the remaining grounds advanced by the appellant.
[18] For the reasons that follow, we are of the view that the appeal should be allowed in part and the matter remitted for further determination.
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AGLC
Mizzi v The Queen [1960] HCA 77
Case
[1960] HCA 77
Decision Date
CaseChat Overview and Summary
The High Court of Australia considered an appeal by the applicant, Mizzi, against his conviction for murder. The applicant had been found guilty of murder by a jury in the Supreme Court of Victoria and sentenced to death. The appeal to the High Court concerned the fairness of the trial and the correctness of the trial judge's directions to the jury.
The central legal issues before the High Court were whether the trial judge had erred in law in his directions to the jury regarding the defence of provocation, and whether the summing up, taken as a whole, was unfair to the applicant. Specifically, the court had to determine if the jury had been adequately instructed on the objective elements of provocation, namely whether the provocation was such as to make an ordinary person act as the accused did, and the subjective elements, that the accused was in fact provoked.
The High Court, in a joint judgment, found that the trial judge's directions on provocation were insufficient and potentially misleading. Their Honours explained that the defence of provocation requires the jury to consider both the subjective state of mind of the accused and the objective standard of an ordinary person. The judge's charge had not sufficiently distinguished these elements, leading to a risk that the jury might have applied an incorrect test. The court emphasised that for provocation to reduce murder to manslaughter, the provocation must be such that it would cause an ordinary person to lose self-control and act in the way the accused did, and that the accused was, in fact, provoked.
The High Court allowed the appeal, quashed the conviction for murder, and ordered a new trial.