So if a man stabs his wife four times it's not actually murder if she's leaving him fir another man

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It's manslaughter apparently. The poor husband snaps, reaches for a knife and sticks it into her 4 times but isn't found guilty of murder because y'know what's a man to do when he knows his missus has got another chap?

Daily Mail link because my iPad is crashing on other newspapers.

And he'll probably be out in less than 8 years

It sounds like the jury were swayed somehow in the process into giving him the benefit of any doubt. The judge may have been inwardly swearing but wouldn't have been able to do much about it.

How bloody depressing.

And yet not particularly surprising. It's like we're being reminded several times a week recently how little women matter.

You don't have to intend death, if you intend to cause serious injury (or serious injury is inevitably foreseeable) then it's murder. But something that would otherwise definitely definitely be murder can be knocked down to manslaughter if the assailant pleads "loss of control" or "diminished responsibility" (also suicide pact or infanticide on the grounds of PND).

Loss of control (or provocation) isn't necessarily bollocks - it's been successfully and IMO legitimately used by people who killed their abusers after prolonged physical and emotional abuse, or killed the rapists who then stood there and mocked them. The defence is there so that if those victims snap and kill their abusers they aren't doomed to a mandatory life sentence. But it seems to have been used in grossly unreasonable and misogynist ways in some cases, harking back to the oldest form of common law provocation defence before 1957 when it was explicitly specifically there to protect men who killed unfaithful wives.

"Pushing him? What do you mean?"

I don't know what it means. It's mentioned only in passing in the BBC article and I'm trying to make sense of it, how important it was in the trial etc. that's why I asked if there was a court report (are those things even still produced?)

Horrific, and sadly has long been the way of things.

I read "Eve Was Framed' years/decades ago - and it is such an eye-opener. Sadly it seems not much has changed.

ghostyslovesheep

If that 13 year old murdered him in a few years, I bet she'd not be let of the hook for it.

Women and girls don't matter is right.

Judge Adele Williams said if they (the jury) believed that [a wife asserts autonomy or does anything innocuous in fact] and believed that was the trigger for Cudworth to snap, they could acquit him

let me get this straight. The judge - who was a woman - instructs that if women trigger men by behaving like autonomous individuals that is grounds for acquittal.

Don't trigger men, women.

Cudworth's story may have more credibility if he'd called the emergency services immediately after he'd stabbed his wife and punctured both of her lungs causing her to bleed out.

I find it hard to comprehend why a woman who was planning to leave her husband would change into a nightdress before telling him, and from the press accounts available at the time of writing the bruising to her neck and left forearm and the blunt force impact to her head would appear to be unexplained.

The sentence for manslaughter is at the judge's discretion and imo in this case she could, and should, have sentenced Cudworth to life.

As it is, he'll be eligible for parole in 7.5 years minus time served on remand and will be free of supervision not later than 2031, whereas if he'd got life he'd be monitored and subject to recall at any time until the day he dies.

RIP Mariola and sincere condolences to your family and friends.

This case from 2002, was shocking and horrifying. All the worse for the fact he did it in front of his 4 children. Again, he got 7 years for manslaughter. The change in the law was specifically supposed to prevent things like that happening.

I read another interview (sorry I don't have a link) where I think it was Vera Baird who asked the Sheffield recorder who automatically took the plea of manslaughter without sending this guy to trial for murder why he did that, and he said it was because it "was classic provocation" and it wouldn't be worth putting the case before a jury as the conviction and sentence would be the same.

www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/bloodbath-as-lawyer-stabbed-wife-to-death-1-2433676

Actually I have managed to find a link to that quote. This was the Memorandum from Justice for Women that led to the change in the law.

www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmpublic/coroners/memos/ucm0902.htm

I'd be interested to read the actual transcript/judge's report because the news reports rather sound as though they're skating over a lot. Obviously, there's no excuse for stabbing someone and concealing their death, but this rather smacks of there being a lot more than has been reported.

Mijka was 36 when killed; her husband will only be 42 when released. Let's hope no other women wind him up.

Interested to know why you think that MotherofFlagons? There are about 10 cases referred to in links on this thread, as well as the OP, where provocation on the grounds of jealousy/anger about their wife seeing another man has been used by men as a defence to reduce a murder charge to manslaughter. It is not unusual in that respect.

Venus - thanks for the link. Interesting quote: In the UK we are rightly disturbed by countries which still execute people for "adultery". But we are in effect saying infidelity is a capital offence if we allow individuals to execute someone for it and not label this deed murder

Yes, that struck me when I read it too.

In the UK we are rightly disturbed by countries which still execute people for "adultery". But we are in effect saying infidelity is a capital offence if we allow individuals to execute someone for it and not label this deed murder

YY, and I'm bringing my daughter up in this world - where she can effectively be summarily executed on the spot, for trying or threatening to leave her partner.

RIP Mijka. You did not receive justice

Also this chilling quote from Justice for Women in the above linked parliamentary memorandum:

JfW certainly hopes that the words "of extremely grave character" will put an end to men getting away with killing their wives because she "nagged" or disagreed with him or because she was (or he believed she was) leaving him. In this country in the 21st century no one owns anyone. No one has the right to kill someone for disobedience. Many men control their wives by saying "don't you dare ever leave me - I don't mind doing 7 years for you".

It wasn't premeditated, therefore manslaughter.

If he had gone away after her revelation and then come back and stabbed her to death some time afterwards, that would have been murder.

Manslaughter doesn't mean "accidentally hit someone, they fell and hit their head so died".

Provocation/loss of control is used in these cases because they are spur of the moment, therefore not premeditated. It is perfectly possible to be convicted for a murder where there is no gap in time from revelation to murder (like Leslie Humes in my link who could have legally been tried for murder but wasn't), that is why the partial defence of "loss of control" (formerly provocation) exists and is used by these men who kill their wives on the spur of the moment. They wouldn't need to bother otherwise.

Loss of control isn't normally allowed as a defence when applied to relationships/sexual encounters. It's supposed to be one of the barriers to using it as a defence, to prevent violent men from using a sudden loss of control as a reason to kill. I would like to read the judgment to see the views/summing up of the trial judge but if I were the CPS lawyer I'd be appealing the matter on any event on the basis that discovering your partner has had sexual encounters with someone else is not enough to satisfy loss of control (there usually needs to be another trigger alongside the sexual encounter discovery).

Either way he shou have been found guilty of murder - certainly held the mens rea for it. The mens rea for murder isn't premeditation but intent to cause GBH or death - well he certainly had that didn't he.

RIP Mika.

See the above links from the Guardian article by Vera Baird posted upthread by Shirley, and the discussion around that. The law was indeed changed a few years ago to take infidelity out of the "loss of control" defence which replaced "provocation", but the judiciary has largely ignored it in practice. Hence cases like this, as have always been the case before the change in the law.

I was aware that provocation was no longer used and surely given that the statute provides that infidelity should not have a place in loss of control then a judges summing up alluding otherwise would be a perfect appeal point wouldn't it?

I really wish loss of control was applied properly - ridiculous that decisions go unchallenged due to a jury decision when we all know a judges direction can sway a jury, and this judge should have not allowed the defence to have legs.

Yes I agree this is murder but no need for the girls and women don't matter martyr speech, there are cases of both genders that get lenient sentences for stupid reasons

I'm pretty sure, as the Guardian article points out, that there is now case law where weasel words have been used to get around the statute, Lego. So no appeal seems to have succeeded or been brought on those grounds.

He got 15 years. And I bet for a murder where you are not judged a risk to anyone else, you'd be improsoned for no longer, and possibly less

This 'type' of murder has a starting sentence of 15 years. He would have a bit knocked off for lack of pre-meditation and a bit put on for concealment of the body. However 15 years is what he would serve before anyone even thought about letting him out and be would have been on licence for the rest of his life. He will serve 7.5 years of a 15 year manslaughter sentence.