DPP v Camplin


DPP v Camplin was an English criminal law appeal to the House of Lords in 1978. Its unanimous judgment helped to define the main limits of defence of provocation chiefly until Parliament replaced the defence with one of "loss of control" in the Coroners and Justice Act 2009. Its ratio decidendi continues to have precedent value as the new "loss of control" defence is a renaming to avoid creep of the term into scenarios for which it was never intended, above all a blurring with diminished responsibility.

Facts of the case

The defendant at trial, Camplin, was 15 years old at the time of the offence. He killed Mohammed Lal Khan by hitting him on the head with a chapati pan following Khan raping him and then laughing at him.

Decision

The jury weighed up the evidence and convicted Camplin of murder. He appealed contending the judge was wrong to direct the jury that age was irrelevant as to his defence of provocation. The appeal was allowed.
The issue at the heart of the Camplin case is whether the "reasonable man" test by numerous precedents laid out for the defence of provocation was one which matched the characteristics of the defendant or whether it ought to be confined to the characteristics of the "adult male". Lord Diplock noted that the "reasonable man" was:
Lord Diplock noted that in the facts before the court, the age of the defendant was "a characteristic which may have its effects on temperament as well as physique". The House of Lords agreed with a previous Court of Appeal judgment which found that it was wrong for the trial judge to have instructed the jury to not consider the defendant's age when deciding whether he had been provoked.

Key citations of this case