Wood, R v

Alcohol dependency syndrome may amount to an abnormality of mind under section 2(1) of the Homicide Act 1957, even without observable alcohol-related brain damage. Voluntary intoxication alone remains outside the defence. Where the syndrome is capable of constituting an abnormality induced by disease or illness, the jury must decide whether it substantially impaired mental responsibility. They must distinguish alcohol consumed as a direct result of the illness from alcohol consumed voluntarily. The degree to which a craving was irresistible, and whether drinking was voluntary, are factual questions. A direction which treats yielding to a craving, or drinking after a normal quota, as necessarily voluntary wrongly removes those questions from the jury.

The appellant appealed against his conviction for murder at Wolverhampton Crown Court before Mitting J and a jury. It was agreed that he suffered from alcohol dependency syndrome. The psychiatric evidence differed on whether prolonged drinking had caused subtle brain damage, but all experts accepted serious problems of drink control.

The trial judge directed the jury on diminished responsibility in two limbs. The appeal concerned the second limb, which treated a craving as voluntary unless the appellant could not have acted otherwise and stated that an alcoholic who accepted further drink after reaching a normal quota was not drinking involuntarily. The central issue was whether that direction correctly stated the law of diminished responsibility in the context of alcohol dependency syndrome.

1. Appeal allowed. The court quashed the murder conviction because the second limb of the summing-up misdirected the jury on diminished responsibility.

2. Section 2(1) of the Homicide Act 1957 does not exclude alcohol dependency syndrome as a possible source of an abnormality of mind. Voluntary intoxication alone cannot found the defence. However, where alcohol dependency syndrome is sufficiently serious to be an abnormality induced by disease or illness, the jury must decide whether it substantially impaired the defendant’s mental responsibility.

3. Observable brain damage is relevant evidence but is not a prerequisite. The rigid distinction drawn in R v Tandy [1989] 1 All ER 267 between cases with brain damage and cases without it was no longer appropriate after Dietschmann [2003] 2 CAR 54. The jury must consider the nature and extent of the syndrome in the individual case.

4. Once the syndrome is found to be an abnormality of mind, the jury should focus on alcohol consumed directly because of the illness and disregard the effects of alcohol voluntarily consumed. That assessment includes whether a craving was irresistible and the extent, if any, to which drinking before the killing was voluntary.

5. The judge’s statements that yielding to a craving was never involuntary and that drinking after a normal quota was necessarily voluntary wrongly implied that an alcoholic could not have an irresistible craving. They also implied that the syndrome must be disregarded unless every drink that day was involuntary. Those propositions were inconsistent with the correct approach.

6. The court invited submissions on whether to order a retrial or substitute a conviction for manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) Allowed the appeal, quashed the murder conviction, and invited submissions on a retrial or a substituted manslaughter conviction.
• Wolverhampton Crown Court Mitting J and a jury convicted the appellant of murder on 11 October 2006.