Domestic abuse, suicide and manslaughter

On Monday 13 January 2024, a jury acquitted Ryan Wellings of the manslaughter of his partner, Kiena Dawes, and convicted him of assault and coercive and controlling behaviour. Their relationship was marked by domestic abuse on the part of Wellings. Ms Dawes killed herself on 22 July 2022, leaving a suicide note that read, ‘I was murdered. Ryan Wellings killed me’.

It is not uncommon for those in abusive relationships to commit suicide. Refuge, the domestic abuse charity, estimates that around three women a week die by suicide as a result of such abuse (www.refuge.org.uk). However, prosecutions for manslaughter in this context are rare (only one person, Nicholas Allen, has been convicted and he pleaded guilty). Despite the acquittal of Wellings, prosecutions may become more common in future. The Crown Prosecution Service issued a statement after the case saying that the verdict would not deter them from considering similar charges in future and that they are actively looking at cases referred to them by the police.

The purpose of this short article is to consider the difficulties the Crown Prosecution Service faces in securing a manslaughter conviction in this context.

The law

There are three types of involuntary manslaughter applicable to individuals, namely manslaughter by an unlawful and dangerous act, gross negligence manslaughter and reckless manslaughter. It is not clear from the reports which type of manslaughter was relied on in the Wellings case, but, in previous cases, the prosecution has charged the unlawful and dangerous variety (see, for example, Dhaliwal [2006] EWCA Crim 1139). The ingredients of this offence (per Lord Hope in A-G’s Reference (No 3 of 1994) [1997] 3 All E.R.) are as follows: (1) an unlawful act; (2) intentionally performed; (3)      in circumstances rendering it dangerous; and (4) causing death.

An unlawful act

The act must be unlawful in the criminal rather than the civil sense (Kennedy (No 2) [2007] 4 All E.R. 1083). The best way of approaching this question is to consider what offence the defendant would have committed had the victim not died. For example, in the Wellings case, it appears that the prosecution relied on assault and/or coercive and controlling behaviour to satisfy this element. In domestic abuse cases, it should not be difficult to persuade a jury that one or both of these offences have been committed by the defendant.

Intentionally performed

This element of the offence is self-explanatory and should not pose a problem for the prosecution.

In circumstances rendering it dangerous

An unlawful act is ‘dangerous’ in this context if it was ‘such as all sober and reasonable people would inevitably recognise must subject the other person to, at least, the risk of some harm resulting therefrom, albeit not serious harm’ (per Edmund Davies J in Church [1965] 2 All E.R. 72). In other words, some harm must have been foreseeable as a result of the unlawful act. The test is objective, so there is no need to prove that the defendant themselves foresaw any harm.

Secondly, if the unlawful act is an assault (in the sense of a battery), the prosecution should not struggle to convince a jury that the dangerousness requirement is satisfied. What if there is no assault and the prosecution has to rely on the offence of coercive and controlling behaviour? The prosecution will not be able to argue that physical harm to the victim was foreseeable. However, in Dhaliwal, it was held that actual bodily harm includes a recognisable psychiatric illness. It is inconceivable that the same principle would not also apply to ‘some harm’ in the context of dangerousness. Therefore, the prosecution would have to prove that recognisable psychiatric harm to the victim of the coercive and controlling behaviour was foreseeable. This may pose a problem for the prosecution, though it would, of course, turn on expert evidence.

Causing death

Finally, the prosecution must prove that the unlawful act caused the victim to take their own life. 

Firstly, the prosecution has to prove factual causation, i.e., that ‘but for’ the abuse, the victim would not have killed themself (White [1910] 2 K.B. 124). This may cause difficulties for the prosecution, especially where the victim has a history of suicide attempts unconnected to the abuse. Although we will never know exactly why the jury in the Wellings case acquitted him of manslaughter, it seems likely that they were not convinced that but for the abuse Ms Dawes would not have killed herself (she had been diagnosed with emotionally unstable personality disorder and had made several suicide attempts before she met Wellings).

If the prosecution can prove factual causation, the defence is likely to argue that the victim’s actions in taking their own life broke the chain of causation between the abuse and the death. Unfortunately, the law on this point is far from clear as the relevant cases deal with factual situations far removed from the domestic abuse/suicide context. 

One principle seems reasonably clear; where the injuries inflicted by the defendant are an operating and substantial cause of death, the victim’s actions will not break the chain of causation. For example, in Dear [1996] Crim. L.R. 595, the defendant was told that the victim had sexually interfered with the defendant’s 12-year-old daughter. He inflicted wounds on the victim with a Stanley knife. The injuries were treated at hospital, but the victim later reopened the wounds and bled to death. The defendant was convicted of murder and appealed against his conviction on the ground that the victim’s actions broke the chain of causation. The Court of Appeal rejected the appeal, holding that where, as here, the injuries inflicted by the defendant were an operating and substantial cause of death, the acts of the victim will not break the chain of causation.

In domestic abuse cases, however, the injuries inflicted by the abuser will not usually be an operating and substantial cause of the death by suicide of the victim. This was the position in the Wellings case. What principle will operate in that type of situation? It seems likely that the appropriate rule would be the one applied in ‘fright and flight’ cases, such as Roberts (1971) Cr App R 95 and Williams [1992] 2 All E.R. 183. It was held in these cases that the actions of the victim will not break the chain of causation if they were within the range of responses which might be expected from a victim in their situation. Assuming that was the direction given by the judge in the Wellings case, the jury may have concluded that Ms Dawes’ suicide was not within the range of such responses.

Conclusion

As the Wellings case shows, in the domestic abuse/suicide scenario, prosecutors face real difficulties in obtaining a conviction for unlawful and dangerous act manslaughter, primarily because of the problems in proving causation.