Volume 1

Criminal responsibility / by Charles Mercier.

  • Charles Arthur Mercier
Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Criminal responsibility / by Charles Mercier. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    29/256 (page 25)
    as it is or is not accompanied by consciousness. Instances of involuntary actions are to be found not only in such motions as the beating of the heart and the heaving of the chest, but in many conscious acts—coughing for instance, the motions which a man makes to save himself from falling, and an infinite number of others. Many acts are involuntary and unconscious, though, as far as others are concerned, they have all the effects of conscious acts, as, for instance, the struggles of a person in a fit of epilepsy. . . . For legal purposes it is enough to say that no involuntary action, whatever effects it may produce, amounts to a crime by the law of England. I do not know that it has ever been suggested that a person who in his sleep set fire to a house or caused the death of another would be guilty of arson or murder. ... It has been thought worth while to say that if A by pushing B against C pushes C over a precipice A and not B is guilty of pushing C over the precipice/ The case of a person, in sleep, causing the death of another, is not at all uncommon, and it is a little surpris¬ ing that Mr. Justice Stephen did not adduce the instance of overlying, which causes the deaths of so many children every year. I have never heard that any woman was ever tried for so causing death. ‘ Such being the nature of an action, a voluntary action is a motion or group of motions accompanied or preceded by volition, and directed towards some object/ Objection must be taken to the wording, to the scope and to the accuracy of this definition. The wording is not quite precise. By ‘ action ’ is really meant no more than 4 act/ By physiologists and psychologists—and we are now in their territory—‘ movement5 is used for change of position of a part of the body by means of the muscular action of the body itself. ‘ Motion ’ is a more