Automatism (case Law) - Reflex Movements

Reflex Movements

One of the difficulties is defining what a voluntary action is and isn't. Words like "willed" have the same difficulty - a voluntary action is one that is willed, whatever that means. In Australia, Ryan v The Queen (1967) 121 CLR 205, the defendant entered a shop with a loaded rifle for a robbery. In a sudden attack, the shop assistant caught the appellant by surprise, causing him by a reflex action to discharge the gun, killing the assistant instantly. The Crimes Act 1900 (NSW) requires that "murder shall be committed where the act of the accused … causing the death charged". Barwick CJ. said at 213:

That a crime cannot be committed except by an act or omission is axiomatic. It is basic, in my opinion, that the ‘act’ of an accused … must be a ‘willed’, a voluntary act which has caused the death charged. It is the act which must be willed, though its consequences may not be intended.

Was the firing of the gun willed so as to constitute an ‘act’ for the purposes of the murder charge? Elliot(1968) comments that 'his reaction was like the sudden movement of a tennis player retrieving a difficult shot; not accompanied by conscious planning, but certainly not involuntary'. Despite accepting that the actual discharge was involuntary, Barwick CJ. confirmed the murder conviction because ‘the act causing death’ included the general circumstances in which the gun was fired. The judge and jury:

could have concluded that the act causing death was the presentation of the cocked, loaded gun with the safety catch unapplied and that its involuntary discharge was a likelihood which ought to have been in the contemplation of the applicant when presenting the gun in the circumstances.

In the U.S., in People v. Decina (1956) 2 NY2d 13 3, 143 the defendant was an epileptic. While driving his car, he had an epileptic seizure and the car went out of control, killing four people. Decina was convicted of negligent homicide because he had voluntarily driven an automobile without assistance knowing that a seizure was possible, breaching Penal Law 1053 on the negligent operation of a motor vehicle.

Even though a reflex or a convulsion is an excuse, the actor in this instance cannot use this defence because he knowingly undertook the risk of driving while suffering from a disease that is characterised by frequent convulsions, etc. The actus reus was established when he began driving.

This reasoning matches that in English law where any foreseeable loss of control is excluded from automatism. To hold otherwise would be to excuse any driver or other person engaged in an activity where public safety is an issue, from the consequences of a loss of control that occurred after losing consciousness. Only sudden and unexpected health problems avoid culpability. In Scots law, Cardle v Mulrainey (1992) SCCR 658 applies the general requirement for cases involving a defence based on insanity or a comparable state, that there must be a total alienation of reason leading to a loss of self-control, to a case in which the accused claimed that he had involuntarily consumed a drug which had the effect that he knew what he was doing but was unable to refrain from acting (at 668):

Where, as in the present case, the accused knew what he was doing and was aware of the nature and quality of his acts and that what he was doing was wrong, he cannot be said to be suffering from the total alienation of reason in regard to the crime with which he is charged which the defence requires. The sheriff found in finding that the respondent's ability to reason the consequences of his actions to himself was affected by his ingestion of the drug. The finding narrates that he was unable to take account in his actions of the fact that they were criminal in character and to refrain for them. But this inability to exert self-control, which the sheriff has described as an inability to complete the reasoning process, must be distinguished from the essential requirement that there should be total alienation of the accused's mental faculties of reasoning and of understanding what he is doing.