Homicide, Culpable or Not

I started my Law classes for the year today, and boy did it start with a bang!

First, let me talk about our lecturer. We had Norbani for Criminal Law and my personal opinion of her is that she’s a little mental. But that’s great! She’ll be able to make the study of Criminal Law absolutely fun.

As for what we learned today – we covered the basics of Criminal Law – all crimes generally require two elements:

And we started of with the most gory of all crimes – murder (S.300) and culpable homicide not amounting to murder (S.299). As you can imagine, the cases were all pretty gory but the lecturer managed to make it downright fun at times.

Murder, has the actus reus of causing death. In the case of murder, the main issue is the chain of causation. It must be shown that the death of the victim was caused by the act of the defendant. In this, the medical report i.e. cause of death (COD) is critical.

There are a number of illustrations in the act that show what it means by causing death, supported by a number of classic cases. The key take away is that the injury must be operating and is the major factor in causing the death of the victim. Otherwise, there is no actus reus for homicide, culpable or otherwise.

actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea

The next element is that of mens rea or the criminal intent. This is the most critical element and there are varying levels of intent ranging from straightforward assassination to acts of pure stupidity (my own words). The key difference between culpable homicide (S.299) and murder (S.300) is generally the magnitude of the criminal intent.

However, there are also varying levels of intent that have a direct consequence on the maximum sentence meted out. For murder, there are:

  • intent to cause death – straightforward assassination.
  • intent to cause bodily harm, with special knowledge that it would result in the death of V.
  • intent to cause bodily harm, with the natural consequence of the act being death.
  • knowingly putting V in imminent danger, that can cause death, without any reasonable excuse.

For culpable homicide, they are similar to murder, except in the necessary level or magnitude of the intent:

  • intent to cause death – usually of a less violent nature.
  • intent to cause bodily harm, which is likely to cause death.
  • knowingly committing the act, that may normally cause death.

There are a number of tests that can be applied for some of the subjective elements. There are also a number of cases that serve as illustrations on the various elements.

The key take away is that the criminal intent must be proven and cannot be presumed merely from the act or its result. This usually involves the use of a lot of circumstantial evidence or evidence surrounding the murder. Motive, while not proving intent on its own, will affect the state of mind element if absent.

Anyway, that’s my recollection of the key things covered in class today.

PS. I forgot to mention the Objectives of punishments meted out. There are about half a dozen of them. Maybe I’ll talk about those in another blog entry, once I read a bit more about them.

Studying for Law

Since I’ve been asked to help others study for Law, several times, I thought that I should just write an entry about how I think it should be approached. Keep in mind that I’m by no means a four-flatter and that this is the first time I’m actually studying Law. However, having a PhD and being a lecturer, does give me some insight into tertiary education that many of my classmates may miss.

So, take what I have to say with a table-spoon of salt. But here goes.

Read a lot and read widely. I cannot stress how important this is for Law. In engineering, I would tell my students the exact opposite – that is to do and not read so much because engineering is a physical subject, not theoretical. You cannot learn engineering from books.

However, Law is an entirely different creature. Instead of going out and practising Law on the streets, a Law student must be grounded in the underlying philosophy that underpins the legal reasoning and forms the foundation of the legal system that we have.

Therefore, I would have to say that Law students have to read a lot and not just the one text-book. I have to say that for most of my subjects last year, I read at least one book from cover to cover, and picked important sections from another. So, that makes it about 1.5 books on average.

My reading doesn’t stop there.

I read the cases too. Instead of reading the online versions, I actually go to the Law library and photocopy the cases so that I can carry them around with me wherever I go. I would just fold them in half and stuff them in my bag. I would read the cases when I was stuck in traffic, when I was in the toilet, when I was having dinner, etc.

However, I must stress that reading cannot just be done for the sake of reading. The reading has to be done with a clear purpose of understanding the Law.

Therefore, as I read, I questioned. This is advice that I would give to students everywhere, whether Law or Engineering. We have to always as just one question – why. In Engineering, the purpose is to find out how something works the way it does so that we can manipulate it. In Law, the purpose is similar – to understand the legal reasoning behind the decisions so that we can use it.

Now, I don’t stop there either. Once I understand the legal reasoning, I try to go a step further to ask – why – again. We need to not just understand the legal reasoning at face value but also the reason behind the reasoning. This typically dwells into very philosophical matters but it’s something important to know too.

Once that is achieved, I think that it’s safe to say that we’ve understood it sufficiently.

Memorising cases is only important as examples because our Common Law system works through analogies. However, it’s still the underlying legal principles that are more important. Those have to be understood. Then, the cases merely serve as examples to illustrate the point that we’re trying to make.

The rest of it is just positioning and garnish. I personally think that as a student of Law, we must learn to take sides in an argument. Some will disagree with me on this. However, I think that it is necessary. By all means, learn to see all three sides of an issue but always pick a side to stand on after that.

Anyhow, that’s what I think is important.

I must stress again that I’m no means an expert at Law studies. I’m an Engineer, through and through. However, all undergraduate education is the same – learning the fundamentals. So, that’s what we’ve all got to master and for Law, those are the legal principles.

PS: Instead of photocopying, maybe I can just print out the online versions. I wonder if that would save me some paper. Better yet, buy a tablet and carry the PDFs around with me.

Law Exam Results

I picked up a copy of my first year examination results at the faculty office today and boy, was it a surprise for me. While I already knew that I had passed all my papers, I did not know the detail results until today.

Overall, I averaged slightly better than a B+ and I am happy with that result. According to my lawyer friends, averaging a B+ is supposedly a good performance for Law school though it’s not something that I’m quite accustomed to. Hehe.

But the shocker is that I obtained the results that was opposite of that which I had expected.

I was worried about passing Tort since I only managed to cover less than half the syllabus and had trouble answering the paper as it was my first ever Law paper. I actually ended up getting an A for this known killer paper instead. Go figure. I have no idea how I accomplished that.

I was super confident of acing Contract as I had managed to answer that paper well (or so I had thought) but it actually ended up being my worst paper with only a B- to show for it. I must have misread the situations and identified the wrong issues. I was so sure that I did well.

Terbalik pula.

Consti was a wildcard that was quite difficult to predict and was another killer paper. I hardly had time to prepare for this paper as it was already at the end of my exams and my brains were saturated and I was depressed studying it. I ended up with a B+ for this emotionally charged paper.

The other two papers – I got an A for Islamic Law and a B for Malaysian Legal System. Studying Islamic Law was a lot of fun but I have no idea how I ended up with only a B for MLS, a simple expository paper that was supposed to be a walk in the park.

Overall, I am quite happy with my results and I am going to reward myself by buying a new DSLR (Pentax-K30) this evening, just in time for my family holiday next week. But since I didn’t get a majority A result, I won’t be getting myself a prime lens too. I’ll leave that for next year.

I hope that I can bring up my CGPA next year with more As.

Update: I up sold myself to a K30 with a blue anodised body!