Babb v R

• Jurisdiction: Caribbean States
• Judge: Hallinan, C.J,Lewis,Marnon, JJ.A.
• Judgment Date: 10 December 1959
• Court: Federal Supreme Court (West Indies)
• Date: 10 December 1959

Federal Supreme Court

Hallinan, C.J, Lewis and Marnon, JJ.A.

Babb

and

R.

G.C.R. Moe for appellant

C.A. Burton, Attorney General, for respondent

Practice and procedure - Directions to jury — Whether there was evidence of provocation which ought to have been left to the jury — No finding to support this.

Judgment of the Court delivered by the Chief Justice:

1 The ground of appeal in this case, put quite shortly is that there was evidence of provocation which the trial Judge should have left to the jury. The law on the subject is contained in the judgment of Lord Simon in Holmes v. Director of Public Prosecutions 31 Cr. App. R.123 at page 137.

“In dealing with provocation as justifying the view that the crime may be manslaughter and not murder, a distinction must be made between what the Judge lays down as a matter of fact. If there is no sufficient material, even on a view of the evidence most favourable to the accused for a jury, which means a reasonable jury, to form the view that a reasonable person so provoked could be driven though transport of passion and loss of self control, to the degree and method and continuance of violence which produces the death, it is the duty of the Judge as a matter of law to direct the jury that the evidence does not support a verdict of manslaughter.

2 In this case Counsel for the appellant has relied on two pieces of evidence which he submits were evidence of provocation that should have gone to the jury, and that they were cumulative and should be taken together — one is a letter written to the deceased woman suggesting that she had a lover; the contents of that letter were known to the appellant on the day before the killing. Very shortly before the actual stabbing by the appellant of the deceased, the deceased had been heard to appeal to Miss Hope who was her landlady that the appellant should leave her alone; it must be remembered that some days before the appellant, had assaulted the deceased, his reputed wife, and had injured her. Her brother Adolphus, seeing the appellant with his arm around the deceased's waist, came, and in the words of Miss Hope, “knocked” him away. It has been submitted chat that act together with the letter that was written to the deceased, are sufficient evidence of provocation to be left to the jury to decide whether this charge of murder should be reduced to manslaughter.

3 It is difficult to see how the letter could be considered...