R v Graham
The two stage test for duress: whether the defendant was compelled by threats of death or serious injury, and whether a sober person of reasonable firmness would have acted in the same way.
Facts
Mr Graham, a homosexual man, lived with his wife and his homosexual lover, King, who was violent. After drinking and taking drugs, Mr Graham helped King to kill his wife by pulling on one end of an electric flex that King had put around her neck. He said that he had acted out of fear of King, who had been violent towards him in the past. He was convicted of murder.
Legal principle
The Court of Appeal upheld the conviction, and set out the test for duress approved by the House of Lords in R v Howe. Lord Lane CJ said that the jury must ask, first, whether the defendant was, or may have been, impelled to act as he did because, as a result of what he reasonably believed the threatener had said or done, he had good cause to fear that if he did not so act the threatener would kill him or cause him serious physical injury; and second, whether a sober person of reasonable firmness, sharing the characteristics of the defendant, would have responded to that situation by acting as the defendant did. Mr Graham's voluntary intoxication could not be taken into account.
Related cases on defences: self defence, duress and necessity
- Re A (Children) (Conjoined Twins: Surgical Separation) [2001] Fam 147
- Beckford v The Queen [1988] AC 130
- R (Collins) v Secretary of State for Justice [2016] EWHC 33 (Admin), [2016] QB 862
- R v Bowen [1997] 1 WLR 372
- R v Clegg [1995] 1 AC 482
- R v Conway [1989] QB 290
- R v Dudley and Stephens (1884) 14 QBD 273
- R v Gotts [1992] 2 AC 412
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