Week 10 of Reading Between The Lines

2 thoughts on “Week 10 of Reading Between The Lines”

1. Rick Hengst March 19, 2016 at 2:49 pm

   Enjoying the series - I think today's (3/19) got cut off when you started to read the spurgeon quote - just an fyi
2. Dominic August 4, 2016 at 10:51 am

   Enjoying the series. I hit #72 today (which shows I'm a little behind...)

   One interesting thing on the law and "not guilty" verdicts...

   My criminal law lecturer taught me that there are basically two different kinds of defences in English criminal law:

   Excusatory defences
   or
   Justificatory [keep an eye on that word...] defences.

   An excusatory defence might be like manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. The Court says: "We really regret what you did but we see that your mental capacity is impaired so you have a defence to murder. We regret that you did this happened but we understand. You're not guilty of murder (but you are guilty of the lesser offence of manslaughter)."

   A JUSTIFICATORY defence might be if you (say) rugby-tackled someone who was waving a gun around and was about to shoot people. The act of rugby-tackling someone is, technically, in law an assault. But the law says: "You committed an assault. But we're glad you did so. You stopped the shooting. You have a justificatory defence. You are not guilty and you did the right thing."