Submission to the Law Commission's call for evidence: Law of homicide review

Abstract

This submission to the Law Commission's review of the law of homicide draws on qualitative research with 66 men serving mandatory life sentences for murder across different sentence stages. Around four-fifths initially pleaded not guilty; only one-quarter denied guilt when interviewed years later—a shift revealing that capacity for accountability develops over time. The evidence identifies three structural problems with how current law treats accountability: Schedule 21's mechanistic severity creates conditions hostile to moral reflection; joint enterprise's attribution of equal culpability prevents secondary parties from engaging with their actual wrongdoing; and current partial defences recognise some vulnerability patterns while missing others. In each case, the law assumes at sentencing that nothing will change, contains no mechanism to respond when it does, and creates conditions impeding the moral work supposedly justifying punishment. The submission argues for 'second look' provisions and proposes reforms to joint enterprise doctrine and partial defences.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Ben Jarman: orcid.org/0000-0003-3527-5437

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