CASE SUMMARY: PART 21

R vs. Byrne [1960] 2 QB 396
●Criminal Law●
“Abnormality of mind means a state of mind so different from that of ordinary human beings that the reasonable man would term it abnormal”

R vs. Cumming [1891] SLR [NS] 41 (Assizes, Singapore)
●Criminal Law●
“A man who acted in good faith under a misapprehension of facts was not responsible any more than he would be if the facts were as he believed them to be”

R vs. Francis Cassidy [1867] 4 Bom HCR (Cr Ca) 17 (Bombay India)
●Criminal Law●
“Looking at the terms of the s 307 of the Penal Code, as well as the illustrations to it, it is necessary in order to constitute an offence under it, that there must be an act done under such circumstances that death might be caused if the act took effect”

R vs. Halliday [1889] 61 LT 701
●Criminal Law●
“If a man creates in another man’s mind an immediate sense of danger, which causes such person to try to escape, and in so doing he injures himself, the person who creates such a state mind is responsible fro the injuries which result”


R vs. Hudson and Taylor [1971] 2 QB 202
●Criminal Law●
“It is essential to the defence of duress that the threat shall be effective at the moment when the crime is committed. The threat must be a ‘present’ threat in the sense that it is effective to neutralize the will of the accused at that time”

R vs. Instan [1893] 1 QB 450
●Criminal Law●
“It would not be correct to say that every moral obligation involves a legal duty, but every legal duty is founded on a moral obligation. A legal common law duty is nothing else than the enforcing by law of that which is a moral obligation without legal enforcement”

R vs. Mohan [1976] QB 1
●Criminal Law●
“In our judgment it is well established law that intent (mens rea) is an essential ingredient of the offence of attempt”

R vs. Sullivan [1983] 3 WLR 123
●Criminal Law●
“But the meaning of the expression ‘disease of the mind’ as the cause of ‘a defect of reason’ remains unchanged for the purpose of the application of the M’Naghten Rules. I agree with what was said by Devlin J in Kemp [1956] that ‘mind’ in the M’Naghten Rules is used in the ordinary sense of the mental faculties of reason, memory and understanding”
R vs. Vincent Banka [1963] 5 MLJ 66
●Criminal Law●
“Under the Penal Code in Malaysia it is essential that there should be evidence of a common intention, or evidence from which such a common intention, or evidence from which such a common intention can properly be inferred, to commit the act actually committed. In England it is not necessary”

Rainy vs. Bravo [1872] LR 4 PC 287
●Law of Torts●
“If the defamatory writing does not exist, and the secondary evidence is offered of its contents, the words must be proved and not what the witness conceives to be the substance or the effect of them, fro otherwise witness and not the court or a jury would be made the judges of what was a libel”