LAW REPORT.

New Zealand Police Gazette, Volume XLI, Issue 23, 14 June 1916, Page 428

LAW REPORT.

(“ Times Law Reports,” Vol. xxxii, page 414.) [Court of Criminal Appeal.--(Lord Reading, C.J., Ridley and Avory, JJ) —3rd April, 1916.]

Rex v. Phillis

Criminal Law — Murder —Reduction to manslaughter—Pro vocation —Whether angry words sufficient.

Angry words do not constitute sufficient provocation to reduce the killing of a person from murder to manslaughter.

Frederick Phillis, who was convicted on the 16th March of wilful murder before Mr. Justice Low at the Leeds Assizes, and who was sentenced to death, applied for leave to appeal against his conviction. According to the practice of the Court, the application was treated as a final appeal. Mr. C. Mellor, who appeared for the applicant, said that the husband and wife had lived an unhappy life for twenty years, and the wife had repeatedly left the husband. The husband had always taken her back. She had again left him some time before the murder, and the real object of the applicant’s visit to her on the day of the crime was to persuade her to return. It could not be denied that the applicant had paid that visit with a razor in his pocket. He was extremely fond of his wife, and his defence on this point was that he intended, if she refused to return to him, to cut his throat in her presence. His wife declined to return to him, and she told him to go and live with another woman. In a moment of provocation he turned the razor against her. Ho then cut his own throat. The jury recommended the applicant to mercy. Counsel complained that the effect of Mr. Justice Low’s summing up at the trial was to withdraw from the consideration of the jury the defence of manslaughter on the grourd of provocation, and practically to direct the jury that they must return a verdict of guilty of murder. He referred to Rex v. Dinnick (26 The Times L.R., 74) and Rex v. Hopper (31 The Times L.R., 360). Mr. Tebbs, for the Crown, was not called upon.

The Lord Chief Justice said that the question for the Court was whether Mr. Justice Low had been wrong in directing the jury that if they accepted the facts stated in evidence they must return a verdict of murder. The Judge had beld that the language usf d by the woman when she told the applicant to go and live with another woman did not amount to provocation. It would be a serious departure from the law if, merely because of the use of angry words, the killing of a person could be reduced to the crime of manslaughter. The law was that angry words did not constitute sufficient provocation, and Mr. Justice Low so directed the jury. In the opinion of the Court there was no ground for any complaint about his summing up. The jury had returned a verdict of guilty of murder, with a recommendation to mercy. That recommendation was a matter with which the Court had nothing to do. It was entirely for the Home Secretary. Nothing that the Court had said was intended in any way to detract from the value of the recommendation to mercy. Solicitors—The Registrar of the Court of Criminal Appeal ; the Direotor of Public Prosecutions.