Assisting Suicide (original) (raw)

Journal of Criminal Law, 1990

Abstract

In a recent article in the Journal of Criminal Law, 1 Jeremy Horder argues in favour of a new defence of mercy killing to a charge of aiding and abetting suicide. He suggests that "[i]f there is no reason to stigmatise as criminal reasonable actions motivated by fear or serious violence or understandable rage, then the same should be true of reasonable actions motivated by understandable compassion.'? The purpose of this paper is to show that Horder's conclusion is reached on the basis of some questionable assumptions about the role of motives in the substantive criminal law. To the extent that Horder favours a complete defence of mercy-killing to the offence of aiding and abetting suicide, the argument does not succeed; to the extent that the weaker claim holds, i.e. that emotions may in some circumstances overwhelm a person and that provision should be made for reduction of sentences of those who act in a profound state of anxiety, there is no reason to suppose that we should accept Horder's conclusion. Recent trends in the House of Lords demonstrate a shift away from new defences to crimes committed intentionally. Most recent expressions of this may be seen in Howe' and may be observed generally in a series of decisions of the House of Lords after Moloney:" In England a specially enacted offence provides for reduced penalties in cases of aiding and abetting another's suicides In Beecham's case" the accused assisted his daughter to commit suicide by connecting a hose from the exhaust of her car to its

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