R v Dowds
Acute voluntary intoxication is not a recognised medical condition for diminished responsibility, even though it appears in international medical classifications.
Facts
Mr Dowds, a heavy drinker, stabbed his partner to death while very drunk. At his trial for murder, he argued that he could rely on the defence of diminished responsibility, as amended by the Coroners and Justice Act 2009, because acute intoxication is listed in the World Health Organisation's International Classification of Diseases and so was a recognised medical condition. The judge refused to leave the defence to the jury, and he was convicted of murder.
Legal principle
The Court of Appeal upheld the conviction. Hughes LJ said that the presence of a condition in a medical classification is not necessarily enough to make it a recognised medical condition for the purposes of diminished responsibility. Parliament had not intended to change the long established rule that voluntary intoxication cannot found a defence of diminished responsibility, and to allow it would be contrary to the general principle that voluntary intoxication is no excuse for violence. Alcohol dependency syndrome, as opposed to simple intoxication, may be a recognised medical condition.
Related cases on murder and voluntary manslaughter
- Attorney General for Jersey v Holley [2005] UKPC 23, [2005] 2 AC 580
- R v Ahluwalia [1992] 4 All ER 889
- R v Asmelash [2013] EWCA Crim 157, [2014] QB 103
- R v Byrne [1960] 2 QB 396
- R v Challen [2019] EWCA Crim 916
- R v Clinton [2012] EWCA Crim 2, [2013] QB 1
- R v Dawes; R v Hatter; R v Bowyer [2013] EWCA Crim 322, [2014] 1 WLR 947
- R v Dietschmann [2003] UKHL 10, [2003] 1 AC 1209
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