S v Whitehead

Last updated November 07, 2023

In S v Whitehead, an important case in South African criminal procedure, the appellants were convicted of public violence and culpable homicide and, in the case of the seventh appellant, of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm.

The charges arose from an incident in which a group of men attacked striking municipal workers in a rural town. In the course of the attack, one of the workers was assaulted with a blunt instrument and later died of his injuries.

The court held that there was no infallible formula to determine whether or not there had been a duplication of convictions.

The various tests formulated by the courts were not rules of law, and nor were they exhaustive. They were simply useful practical guidelines and, if they failed to provide a satisfactory answer, the matter was correctly left to the common sense, wisdom, experience and sense of fairness of the court.

The court considered both tests and held that

in respect of the evidence test, the evidence required to secure convictions on the public violence charge and the culpable homicide charge is different; and
in respect of the single intention test, it cannot be said that a group of people had a common intention to commit culpable homicide since the fault element of this offense lay in negligence.

Thus there was no improper duplication of convictions.

When this case was taken on appeal, the court held that there was an improper duplication, but the case is still important to show how the court considered the question of improper duplications.

Related Research Articles

In law, provocation is when a person is considered to have committed a criminal act partly because of a preceding set of events that might cause a reasonable individual to lose self control. This makes them less morally culpable than if the act was premeditated (pre-planned) and done out of pure malice. It "affects the quality of the actor's state of mind as an indicator of moral blameworthiness."

Corporate manslaughter is a criminal offence in English law, being an act of homicide committed by a company or organisation. In general, in English criminal law, a juristic person is in the same position as a natural person, and may be convicted for committing many offences. The Court of Appeal confirmed in one of the cases following the Herald of Free Enterprise disaster that a company can, in principle, commit manslaughter, although all defendants in that case were acquitted.

Malice is a legal term which refers to a party's intention to do injury to another party. Malice is either expressed or implied. For example, malice is expressed when there is manifested a deliberate intention to unlawfully take away the life of a human being. Malice is implied when no considerable provocation appears, or when the circumstances attending the killing show an abandoned and malignant heart. Malice, in a legal sense, may be inferred from the evidence and imputed to the defendant, depending on the nature of the case.

Common assault is an offence in English law. It is committed by a person who causes another person to apprehend the immediate use of unlawful violence by the defendant. In England and Wales, the penalty and mode of trial for this offence is provided by section 39 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988.

Murder is an offence under the common law of England and Wales. It is considered the most serious form of homicide, in which one person kills another with the intention to cause either death or serious injury unlawfully. The element of intentionality was originally termed malice aforethought, although it required neither malice nor premeditation. Baker, chapter 14 states that many killings done with a high degree of subjective recklessness were treated as murder from the 12th century right through until the 1974 decision in DPP v Hyam.

In English law, provocation was a mitigatory defence to murder which had taken many guises over generations many of which had been strongly disapproved and modified. In closing decades, in widely upheld form, it amounted to proving a reasonable total loss of control as a response to another's objectively provocative conduct sufficient to convert what would otherwise have been murder into manslaughter. It only applied to murder. It was abolished on 4 October 2010 by section 56(1) of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009, but thereby replaced by the superseding—and more precisely worded—loss of control defence.

In the English law of homicide, manslaughter is a less serious offence than murder, the differential being between levels of fault based on the mens rea or by reason of a partial defence. In England and Wales, a common practice is to prefer a charge of murder, with the judge or defence able to introduce manslaughter as an option. The jury then decides whether the defendant is guilty or not guilty of either murder or manslaughter. On conviction for manslaughter, sentencing is at the judge's discretion, whereas a sentence of life imprisonment is mandatory on conviction for murder. Manslaughter may be either voluntary or involuntary, depending on whether the accused has the required mens rea for murder.

The Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It is concerned with criminal justice and concentrates upon legal protection and assistance to victims of crime, particularly domestic violence. It also expands the provision for trials without a jury, brings in new rules for trials for causing the death of a child or vulnerable adult, and permits bailiffs to use force to enter homes.

In India according to Section 300 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, murder is defined as follows:

Murder.--Except in the cases hereinafter excepted, culpable homicide is murder, if the act by which the death is caused is done with the intention of causing death, or- 167 2ndly.-If it is done with the intention of causing such bodily injury as the offender knows to be likely to cause the death of the person to whom the harm is caused. or- 3rdly.-If it is done with the intention of causing bodily injury to any person and the bodily injury intended to be inflicted is sufficient in the ordinary course of nature to cause death, or- 4thly.-If the person committing the act knows that it is so imminently dangerous that it must, in all probability, cause death, or such bodily injury as is likely to cause death, and commits such act without any excuse for incurring the risk of causing death or such injury as aforesaid.

Criminal law is a system of laws that is connected with crimes and punishments of an individual who commits crimes. In comparison, civil law is where the case argues their issues with one entity to another entity with support of the law. Crimes can vary in definition by jurisdiction but the basis for a crime are fairly consistent regardless.

South African criminal law is the body of national law relating to crime in South Africa. In the definition of Van der Walt et al., a crime is "conduct which common or statute law prohibits and expressly or impliedly subjects to punishment remissible by the state alone and which the offender cannot avoid by his own act once he has been convicted." Crime involves the infliction of harm against society. The function or object of criminal law is to provide a social mechanism with which to coerce members of society to abstain from conduct that is harmful to the interests of society.

Criminal procedure in South Africa refers to the adjudication process of that country's criminal law. It forms part of procedural or adjectival law, and describes the means by which its substantive counterpart, South African criminal law, is applied. It has its basis mainly in English law.

In S v Fernandez, an important case in South African criminal law, heard on February 17, 1966, the court held that the appellant had been negligent in mending a cage from which a baboon had subsequently escaped, which subsequently bit a child, who subsequently died. The appellant must have foreseen the likelihood of an attack in the event of the baboon's escaping; he was, the court held, therefore rightly convicted of culpable homicide. The case was an appeal from a decision in the Transvaal Provincial Division by Galgut J and Clayden J, who had dismissed an appeal from a conviction in a magistrate's court.

In S v Jackson, an important case in South African criminal law, the Appellate Division held that a person is justified in killing in self-defence not only when he fears that his life is in danger but also when he fears grievous bodily harm. PE Linde appeared for the appellant and BG van der Walt, SC, Attorney-General OFS, for the State. The case was heard on March 8, 1963. The appellant's attorney was DA Carroll, Johannesburg.

Rex v Zikalala is an important case in South African criminal law, heard on February 27, 1953. Zikalala, the appellant, had been charged and convicted of the culpable homicide in causing the death of one Alpheus Tsele. On appeal to the Appellate Division, he successfully argued self-defence.

In S v Prins en 'n Ander, an important case in South African criminal procedure, the two appellants had been charged with both murder and robbery. They had attacked the complainant with a rake and he had died 9 days later from the injuries sustained from the attack. After the assault, they had robbed him.

In S v Mampa (1985), an important case in South African criminal procedure, the accused had been convicted in a magistrate's court of two charges of culpable homicide.

The appellant in Van Aardt v S, an important case in South African criminal law, had been convicted in the Grahamstown High Court of the murder of a fifteen-year-old youth, following a savage beating administered by the appellant, who suspected the deceased of theft. An appeal to the full bench of the Eastern Cape High Court was unsuccessful, so the matter came on further appeal before the Supreme Court of Appeal. The appellant admitted common assault, but denied that such assault had caused the death of the deceased, or that he bore a legal duty to seek medical intervention for the deceased.

S v Dlamini was a South African court case. The central question was of duplication of convictions.

On 13 March 1997, at one of the HDB flats in King George's Avenue, Kallang, 53-year-old Sivapackiam Veerappan Rengasamy was discovered dead in her bedroom by her son. Sivapackiam was found to have been stabbed three times in the neck and she died from the wounds. During police investigations, Sivapackiam's tenant Gerardine Andrew, a 36-year-old prostitute, told police that on the day of the murder, she returned to the flat and saw three people attacking her landlady and robbing her, and they threatened her to leave after briefly holding her hostage.

References

S v Whitehead and Others 2008 (1) SACR 431 (SCA)

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.