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‘Red mist’ homicide: sexual infidelity and the English law of murder (glossing Titus Andronicus)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2018
Abstract
For over 300 years, criminal courts have regarded sexual infidelity as sufficiently grave provocation as to provide a warrant, indeed a ‘moral warrant’, for reducing murder to manslaughter. While the warrant has spilled over into diminished responsibility defences, wounding, grievous bodily harm and attempted murder cases, it is provocation cases that have provided the precedents enshrining a defendant's impassioned homicidal sexual infidelity tale as excusatory. Periodically, judges and law reformers attempt to reign in provocation defences, most recently in England and Wales where provocation has been replaced by a loss of control defence that, most controversially, specifically excludes sexual infidelity as a trigger for loss of control. This paper reflects on this reform and its reception, glossing Shakespeare's scathing critique of warrants for murder in Titus Andronicus.
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Footnotes
Research for this paper was conducted during my visiting professorial fellowship at Queen Mary Law School, University of London. An earlier version was delivered at a seminar in the School in October 2011. I thank those present for their comments. Once again, I acknowledge the inspired work of Eric Heinze in the law and Shakespeare field, and wish to thank him for all his support. Thanks also to the referees for their informed and constructive comments. Citations follow lineation and typesetting in EM Waith (ed) William Shakespeare: Titus Andronicus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
References
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46. Corbett Roberts, a Jamaican immigrant, was hanged in Birmingham prison in 1955 for killing his wife with two hammers. ‘News in brief’ (1955) The Times 3 August and ‘Corbett Roberts’, available at http://www.murder.uk. Jack Cull was the last Englishman hanged for killing his wife. The prosecution alleged he stabbed her with a bayonet after receiving a letter saying she wished to leave him. ‘Murder of 17-year old wife’ (1952) The Times 13 September.
47. In some years, over half the men hanged had killed wives, rising as high as eight out of the twelve executed in 1900, seven out of the eight in 1906, eight out of the ten in 1912 and seven out of the nine in 1915. http://www.capitalpunishment.org/hanged
48. Of the four other women executed for murdering their husbands in twentieth-century Britain, his infidelity was raised as a motive in just one case. Ethel Major, hanged in 1934 for poisoning her husband, was said to be jealous of a woman neighbour. ‘Wife charged with murder’ (1934) The Times 30 October. The Court noted that Mr Major was ‘addicted to drink, had a violent temper and uttered many threats’. The Times, 4 December 1934. Ellis is well-known as the last woman hanged in England, but who can name the man hanged the same year for murdering a woman partner? Answer: Winston Shaw, hanged at Leeds prison in 1955 for murdering a former girlfriend.
49. See the discussion of the Holmes case below.
50. Anonymous[1670] T Raym 212; also cited as Maddy's Case[1671] 1 Vent 158.
51. R v Mawgridge, above n 17, at 135.
52. Ibid, at 137.
53. Pearson's Case[1832] 2 Lewin 216.
54. R v Kirkham[1837] 173 ER 422 at 425.
55. Ibid, at 423.
56. R v Matthias Kelly[1848] 175 ER 342 at 342–343.
57. R v Townley[1863] 176 ER 384.
58. Ibid, at 386.
59. Trial of Charles Taylor, November 1882, Old Bailey Proceedings Online (http://www.oldbaileyonline.org).
60. For example, Trial of Alfred Palmer, September 1901, ibid.
61. Trial of John Price, October 1901, ibid.
62. Trial of Henry Williams, October 1902, ibid.
63. Trial of Edward Harrison, 1905, ibid.
64. R v Rothwell[1871] 12 Cox CC 145.
65. Ibid, at 147.
66. R v Palmer[1913] 2 KB 29.
67. Ibid, at 31 and R v Greening[1914] 9 Cr App R 105.
68. R v Ellor[1921] 15 Cr App R 41 at 43–44, citing Palmer (above n 66), Greening (above n 67) and R v Birchill[1914] 9 Cr App R 91.
69. R v Gauthier[1944] 29 Cr App R 113.
70. Holmes, above n 23.
71. Ibid, at 593–594.
72. Ibid, at 596.
73. Ibid, at 598.
74. Ibid, at 600.
75. Ibid, at 600–601.
76. Surveying the state of the English case-law at the turn of the twenty-first century, one commentator, recalling Viscount Simon's observation, observed that it ‘seems that we are going backwards by going forwards!’. Allen, Mj ‘Provocation's reasonable man: a plea for provocation's self control’ (2000) 64 J Crim Law 216 at 240CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Bandalli (above n 2, at 399) puts it more bluntly: the Homicide Act 1957 ‘facilitated the regression of men's matrimonial evolution’.
77. R v Vinagre[1979] 69 Cr App R 104 at 105.
78. Ibid, at 106.
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81. R v Birks[2011] 1 Cr App R (S) 48.
82. Attorney General's Reference No 74 of 2002, above n 31, at 277–280, citing Taylor[1987] 9 Cr App R (S) 175, Gilbey[1990] 12 Cr App R (S) 49 and Light[1995] 16 Cr App R (S) 824.
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84. R v Haines[1983] 5 Cr App R (S) 58.
85. R v Green[1986] 8 Cr App R (S) 284 at 287. The Court thought the defendant in Donnelly[1983] 5 Cr App R (S) 70, who had behaved in an extremely jealous manner over a long period, accusing his wife of infidelity, threatened her and hitting her with a hammer, was ‘lucky’ to get his sentence reduced from nine to seven years. Ibid.
86. R v Dearn[1990–1991] 12 Cr App R (S) 527 at 528. The trial judge found it ‘very hard to think of a worse case of attempted murder than this....Its consequences have been utterly disastrous, some would say as bad if not worse’ than if he had killed her. Ibid.
87. R v Townsend[1979] 1 Cr App R (S) 333. Instead, they reduced his sentence of fifteen years imprisonment to ten.
88. R v Casseram[1992] 13 Cr App R (S) 384 at 387–388.
89. R v Bedford[1993] 14 Cr App R (S) 336 at 338.
90. R v Jason Clement[1995] 16 Cr App R (S) 811 at 815 (my emphasis).
91. R v Giboin[1980] 2 Cr App R (S) 99. Nevertheless, the court reduced his sentence from six to five years. See the comments comparing sentencing in attempted murder and manslaughter cases in Horder, J ‘Sex, violence and sentencing in domestic provocation cases’ (1989) Crim LR 546 Google Scholar at 547–548 and Burton, above n 33, at 282–286.
92. Attorney General's Reference No 80 of 2009 [2010] EWCA Crim 470 at para 19.
93. R v Thompson Attorney General's Reference No 1 of 2010 [2010] EWCA Crim 748 at para 21.
94. Ibid at para 22.
95. R v Edwards Attorney General's Reference No 008 of 2011 [2011] EWCA Crim 1461 at para 15.
96. R v Williams (Sanchez) Attorney General's Reference No 23 of 2011 [2001] EWCA Crim 1496.
97. Ibid, at para 32.
98. Ibid, at para 33.
99. R v Rush[2008] Cr App R(S) 45 at para 26.
100. R v Clinton, R v Parker, R v Evans[2012] EWCA Crim 2. So much for the view, expressed in 1973, that the notion that ‘a husband can treat his wife with any kind of force seems now to be obsolete, whether she is living with him or apart’. ‘Kidnapping one's wife: R v Reid’ (1973) 37 J Crim Law 33.
101. Crosbie, C ‘Fixing moderation: Titus Andronicus and the Aristotelian determination of value’ (2007) 58 Shakespeare Quarterly 147 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also D Callaghan and CR Kyle ‘The wilde side of justice in early modern England and Titus Andronicus’ in Jordan and Cunningham, above n 11, and Raffield, above n 11, pp 18ff.
102. Bate, above n 40, p 28.
103. Raffield, above n 11, p 21.
104. Bate, above n 40, p 28. Extending the argument, Raffield (above n 11, pp 28–29) claims that Titus' search for justice ‘marks him out also as the dramatic descendant’ of the ‘apologist for the constitutional supremacy of the common law, Sir John Fortescue’.
105. Crosbie, above n 101, pp 148 and 163–164. Indeed, it is easy to overlook. This was a man who slaughtered one son for filial disobedience, killed his daughter for dishonouring the family by getting herself raped and served up two sons to their mother in a pie as revenge for plotting the rape!
106. Raffield, above n 11, p 48. According to Crosbie (above n 101 pp 158–159), Titus' piety, ‘however imperfect, nonetheless nobly privileges the ethos of gratitude over unrestrained self-interest’, even when he kills Lavinia, Compare Hunt, M ‘Compelling art in Titus Andronicus’ (1999) 28 Studies in English Literature 197 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, arguing at 211, that Titus adapts the Virginius story to ‘satisfy his perverted sense of honour. Clearly, Lavinia's death in Titus' staging is gratuitous’.
107. James, above n 42. Bate describes James' argument as ‘ingenious’, noting its coherence with his ‘sense’ that Shakespeare uses Ovid to ‘destabilise a Virgilian, imperial idiom’. Bate, above n 36, p 103, n 33.
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110. Raffield, above n 11, p 39.
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114. I Cetin ‘Titus Andronicus: a comedy of blood’ (2010) 28 Shakespeare Bulletin 356 at 357.
115. This would not surprise Marianne Constable who argues that ‘modern law often seems silent as to justice’. Constable, M Just Silences: The Limits and Possibilities of Modern Law (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press) p 7 Google Scholar.
116. Vinagre, above n 77, at 106–107.
117. Townsend, above n 87, at 334.
118. Constable, above n 115, p 177.
119. Buckner's Case[1655] Style 467 at 469.
120. Oneby[1727] 2 Ld Raym 1485 at 1494–1495.
121. Ibid.
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