Children and Young Persons Act 1933<\/a>. The defendant appealed.<\/p>\nIssues<\/h3>\n
The jury convicted Mr Lowe based on a direction by the judge that manslaughter is a necessary consequence of a conviction of wilful neglect under s.1(1) of CAYPA 1933<\/strong> if that neglect caused the victim\u2019s death. The jury specified that it had found that the defendant was not reckless (the mens rea element of manslaughter) and that it was, therefore, not his recklessness that caused the child\u2019s death. Mr Lowe argued that the jury had been misdirected about the necessary elements of manslaughter and that \u201cwilful neglect\u201d involved proof that he intended the consequences of the neglect.<\/p>\nDecision \/ Outcome<\/h3>\n
Under s.1(1) of CAYPA 1933<\/strong> \u201cwilful neglect\u201d means that the neglect was deliberate and not merely inadvertent. Although the defendant may not have been able to foresee the consequences of not calling a doctor, this failure was deliberate nevertheless. His conviction under CAYPA 1933<\/strong> was therefore proper. As to manslaughter by negligence, Mr Lowe was expressly found by the jury not<\/em> to have been reckless. Consequently, his omission, which was wilful only to the extent of not being inadvertent, should not have inevitably led to a conviction for manslaughter, even though it caused his child\u2019s death. Overall, the jury had indeed been misdirected, as a result of which Mr Lowe\u2019s conviction for manslaughter could not stand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The connection between \u201cwilful neglect\u201d under s.1(1) of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933 and manslaughter by negligence. Mr Lowe, of low intelligence, did not call a doctor to his sick infant child. The child died from dehydration and gross emaciation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85],"class_list":["post-5345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cases","tag-uk-law"],"yoast_head":"\n
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