Delayed reaction killing: a new deal?
She had been found guilty of the murder of her husband by a 10 to 2 majority, after a seven-day trial on her plea of manslaughter, but not guilty to murder, which was unacceptable to the prosecution. She threw petrol in his bedroom setting it alight. He sustained burns from which he died six days later.
At the re-trial the prosecution said they now accepted her plea of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, a defence not put forward at the original trial.
The case raises important questions about provocation; at the re-trial the judge said her new plea was accepted on the strength of fresh evidence of Ahluwalia's mental health, not on the grounds of provocation.
Ahluwalia suffered violence and abuse from the onset of the marriage. He was a big man and she was slight. Her complaints of violence were supported by entries in her doctor's notes. She discovered he was having an affair; he refused to talk about it and threatened her with a hot iron. He also demanded £200 the next morning or he would beat her.
She went to bed about midnight, was unable to sleep and brooded on his refusal to speak to her and threat to beat her in the morning. She had bought a can of petrol and had put it in the lean-to outside the house. At some time after 2.30 am, she got up went downstairs, poured about two pints of petrol into a bucket to make it easier to throw, lit a candle and carried them upstairs, taking an oven glove for protection and a stick.
She went to the bedroom, threw in some petrol, lit the stick from the candle and threw it into the room.
At the trial no medical evidence of her condition was adduced. Her defence was that she did not intend to kill or cause serious harm; only to inflict pain. Provocation was a secondary line of defence.
Three grounds of appeal were raised. The fist two related to the Judge's directions on provocation, the third not raised at the trial was diminished responsibility.
The definition of provocation is narrow, Lord Goddard said in R v Duffy (note) [1949] 1 All E.R. 932, that it was an act or words "...which would cause in any reasonable person and actually causes in the accused, a sudden and temporary loss of self control, rendering the accused so subject to passion as to make him for the moment not master of his mind." What is vital is the interval between the provocative conduct and the defendant's reaction, the length of time might wholly undermine the defence.
The difficulty faced by the Court of Appeal is that they cannot change the law, they are bound by precedent; by previous decisions of that Court. It is a matter for Parliament to consider any change. You cannot change provocation into deliberate retribution however strongly you feel about it. To put it bluntly, beaten wives cannot be granted a licence to kill.
It is important to note that the Court of Appeal rejected a submission that the Judge at the original trial had wrongly directed the jury on the circumstances in which provocation could reduce the crime from murder to manslaughter, and so avoid the mandatory term of life imprisonment.
The Home Office have published (see Law Society Gazette 13 November 1991) the results of research, showing more than 50% of the women found guilty of killing their husbands or lovers get their charges reduced to manslaughter on the grounds of provocation compared with only 30% of men. The research also shows a higher percentage of women receive non-custodial sentences for manslaughter than men, that a smaller percentage are imprisoned and, when they go to goal, women serve shorter sentences than men.
If the previous paragraph is considered, combined with the reality of sentencing the picture is not so gloomy as campaigners would have us believe. The fact is a woman who kills her husband following brutal treatment will receive a life sentence for murder; she is unlikely to serve more than 7 years and could be released in 4 or 5. Provocation reduces murder to manslaughter, the sentence for which is life imprisonment; the same result. Are campaigners suggesting a non-custodial sentence for the taking of a life?
If Parliament maintains its stance on retaining the mandatory life sentence for murder then clearly more must be done to protect battered women. Research by the Women's Aid Federation of England in 1978 revealed there were 150 refuges in England and Wales. (Leaving Violent Men by Binney, Harkell and Nixon).
Apart from bullying at school it is hard for a man to understand the terror of a woman subjected to such treatment as Sara Thornton, (see R v Thornton [1992] Crim L.R. 54), and Kiranjit Ahluwalia. Why not a complete re-think on the question of battered women; if a women kills her child whilst the balance of her mind is disturbed she can be charged with the specific offence of infanticide; why not a particular charge for these delayed action killings? It could be called, "Spouse killing" with spouse defined in the Act as including modern terms such as "live in lover" or "common law marriage". The maximum sentence could be 5 years. In keeping with modern thinking the offence would apply to both sexes. Such a law would require very clear guidelines to avoid a licence to kill.