Manslaughter vs Murder

In order to establish criminal liability, the external elements of that offence must be established. These external elements are known as the actus reus. After this has been proved, the mens rea must be proved in respect of each of those guilty elements. The actus reus and mens rea must occur at the same time, although the interpretation of this can vary with regards to the offence. There are three categories than an offence can fall into when examining the actus reus. The first is that there was a ‘voluntary act’, in which case the accused has voluntarily committed the act. The second possibility is known as ‘the state of affairs’. This simply requires that a state of affairs be present which causes the accused to have committed an offence. Offences arising in this manner are often ones of strict liability. An example of this is found in Lassonneur . Here, the police had brought a woman into the UK against her will, but she was found nonetheless to be an illegal alien. The final basis of liability is liability for failing to act in certain circumstances. There is no general duty to act, however there are a notable amount of specific circumstances where there is such a duty, as developed through the common law.
This is an area of law that presents several difficulties. The main difficulty that has arisen is the attempt to categorise the various duties. There has also been much debate over whether or not certain crimes are even capable of being committed by omission. While the common law has developed certain offences to the extent that they are capable of being committed by omission, such situations are rare. In most cases, the common law has been hostile towards the idea of penalising a failure to act. As Smith and Hogan said “It seems to have been thought that the function of the criminal law was to prevent men from doing positive harm and it was left to public opinion, morality and religion to encourage the doing of good works”

Omissions have been made