UNINTENTIONAL MURDER

Evening Star, Issue 22718, 4 August 1937, Page 11

UNINTENTIONAL MURDER

CDRCHER STATES LAW INTERESTING CASE IN BIRMINGHAM Press Association —By Telegraph—Copyright LONDON, August 3. (Received August 4, at 10.15 a.m.) The coroner (Mr Ingleby Oddie), recording a verdict of suicide m connection with the death of Mrs Warbuiton, drew a distinction between constructive murder and constructive manslaughter, which, he said, was interesting nowadays because it was not so strictly interpreted as formerly, inasmuch as a motorist killing a person by driving dangerously was usually punished for dangerous driving without being charged with manslaughter. Mr Oddie expressed the opinion that a verdict of murder would bo improper in the present case, though an old legal doctrine established that when a person committing a felony unintentionally killed another he was _ guilty of constructive murder. Similarly, a person committing a misdemeanour and unintentionally causing another's death was guilty of constructive manslaughter, but since Mrs Warburton was not fully in possession of her faculties when she committed suicide she was not guilty of felonious intent. For that reason the death of Black was accidental, and a verdict was returned accord%frs Warburton’s husband disclosed that his wife had previously attempted suicide. [A message received on July. 31 stated: Having claimed his letters from the Young Men’s Christian Association at Birmingham, a visitor, Donald Black, died in hospital after Mrs Mary Warburton, aged 65, fell on him from a window on the fourth floor of a building. She was taken to hospital moaning, “ Oh, the poor hoy,” and succumbed to her injuries.]