Unfitness to Plead Consultation Responses - Law Commission ...

entirely possible now under the existing law- for example in murder
cases where diminished responsibility is one of the issues at trial. I have
experience as a trial judge where a Defendant was acquitted by the jury
of murder (on the basis that the Crown had failed to prove that he was
the man who killed the deceased) while it had still heard evidence from
psychiatrists to the effect that, if it was proved he had killed the victim,
he was suffering from diminished responsibility as the result of
psychotic illness. The question of a jury hearing of the psychiatric
condition of a Defendant may also arise if a bad character gateway is
opened under section 101 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003: indeed in the
case cited above, the psychiatric history of the accused (and expert
psychiatric evidence about it) had been admitted as part of the
prosecution case because the prosecution argued that it tended to show
that he engaged in aggressive outburst of violence.
12. I am therefore generally supportive of the Provisional Proposal 8 (para
6.140) but do not agree with Proposal 9.
9
Andrew Gilbart QC
21 st January 2011
Hon Recorder of Manchester
Manchester Crown Court
Crown Square
Manchester
M3 3FL