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accept in its entirety the story of a fight, not necessarily
such a serious fight as the accused told us today did occur,
but at least a brisk interchange of blows, tempers roused,
blood up, and the fortuitous and quite unintentional finding
of this deadly weapon the knife. Then you have to explain why
he found it necessary to strike as many as four blows so
dangerously. Mr. She's suggestion is that his blood was still
up and had not cooled and that he could not be held responsible
for repeating the dose. His own suggestion that he was
unconscious and incapable of forming any intent I must deal
very shortly and then I am done.
English law is a very suspicious thing. It does not
readily believe in abnormal conditions or abnormal happenings.
It wants an awful lot of persuading and it knows of no such
condition as loss of consciousness as an excuse such as the
accused man puts forward. The shortest headnote so far as I
know in the whole of the
English Criminal Law Reports is one
which consists only of these words "The doctrine of irresistible
impulse is unknown to English law," and that is what you have here.
Before the accused can avail himself of anything of that sort he
would have to set up the defence of insanity and he is not
doing so, so we are bound to presume that he is sane.
And we
presume that he knew perfectly well what he was doing and if he
lost his temper because he was insulted and angry, that is no
excuse in law whatsoever. What evidence is there beyond his
own words spoken for the first time today that he had lost
consciousness ? In every one of his statements he has admitted
and admitted frankly that he never lost consciousness. From
the time of his statement to the Magistrate who took the dying
deposition, he has admitted in every sentence that he was
conscious and capable of forming an intent throughout the whole
incident. The only defence is what Mr. She has put.
Are you