THE single offence of murder should be replaced by an American-style system based on the seriousness of the killing, the Director of Public Prosecutions said last night.
Ken Macdonald, QC, the man in charge of prosecutions in England and Wales, told The Times that murder laws should be reformed because killers were escaping justice through the inflexibility of the present system. “I am strongly in favour of a system that recognises degrees of homicide,” he said in an interview.
His call will be backed by the judiciary, which has long resented the straitjacket of the existing law. But the Home Office is concerned that any reform could lay it open to charges of being soft on crime.
Mr Macdonald said that he believed that most murder convictions would still carry a mandatory life sentence but that offenders slipped through the net under the present law.
His proposal would mean that only those convicted of the most serious murders would be jailed for life, with those found guilty of lesser degree murders being given shorter jail terms.
Judges would have the discretion to match sentences more closely to the crime, reflecting a wide variation in crimes classed as murder at present, from sadistic serial killings of children to a doctor giving an injection to a patient who begs to have his life ended.
Under the existing law, a mandatory life sentence in a mercy killing case is often avoided only because of a deal between the defence, the prosecution and the court to say that the accused is suffering from diminished responsibility. A new law would allow for such a defendant to be charged with a lower degree of murder, carrying a lesser jail term.
The lower degree could also be applied to victims of domestic violence who kill their partners in self defence.
The DPP said that too often prosecutors faced the “either/or” choice of charging a suspect with murder, which carries a mandatory life sentence, or manslaughter. That ran the risk that prosecutors would press the more serious charge, lose the case and that guilty defendants could be acquitted.
The DPP, a leading defence barrister before he was appointed 18 months ago, said that he could recall cases when he was at the Bar where defendants would be acquitted because of the inflexibility of the law.
“There should be degrees of homicide, not just murder or manslaughter, but three or four degrees,” he said. Most killers would still merit a mandatory life sentence. “If we are talking about a serious homicide, killing with an intention to kill, that should attract a mandatory life sentence.”
In 1998, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Bingham of Cornhill, said that the case of Corporal Lee Clegg, a British soldier in Belfast who was convicted of murder, showed the unjustifiability of lumping all murders together. The soldier was convicted of murdering a joyrider and wounding her companion when on patrol in West Belfast.
Corporal Clegg was convicted because he fired his final shot through the back of the car when the joyriders no longer presented a threat. He was later cleared after a retrial.
In a lecture Lord Bingham said that, on the facts of the first trial, a life had been unlawfully taken and he should have been punished. “But he was on any showing a young man of good character . . . It is a travesty to treat his case as if it were in the same league of crimin- ality as that of a contract killer or an armed robber.”
Mr Macdonald’s comments are expected to resurrect a full-scale review of the murder laws, promised by David Blunkett, the former Home Secretary, last October, with the prospect of a new tariff of offences.
The Home Office review, to cover England and Wales, was prompted by a Law Commission report last August that condemned the law as a mess.
Terms of reference were expected in February. But with the change of Home Secretary, the need to introduce anti- terrorism measures and the general election, it was deferred. The Home Office said yesterday that the Home Secretary was committed to the review and that its terms of reference would be announced in due course.
In 2003-04, about 50 per cent of people charged with murder were convicted, compared with 41 per cent a decade before.
In most American murder cases, prosecutors decide to charge the accused with first-degree or second-degree murder. The distinction between “murder one” and “murder two” varies between states, but most define the crucial difference as premeditation and whether the killing is accompanied by another crime, such as rape, robbery or torture; or if the victim is a police officer.
In states which permit capital punishment, the distinction can mean the difference between life and death.
Mr Macdonald also strongly backed proposed new laws to tackle terror suspects, including a new offence of glorifying in terrorism and committing acts “preparatory” to terrorism.
The offences were useful, he said, to catch people “on the fringes of terrorist activity”. He had also set up a new anti- terrorism casework division at the CPS headquarters which would report directly to him.
He also supported the proposed new offence of incitement to religious hatred.
