The Blip Blop Blog (Team Entity)

The situation is somewhat more complicated in developing countries because despite some official figures being released, I suspect that the figures in these countries are higher than what they are or what they are perceived to be because a lot of births go unreported especially in rural areas with little or no medical facilities (95% of infants who are killed before they reach the age of 1 are not born in hospitals). Now a majority of these infants are killed by their mothers usually in the first week of birth but even if they survive the first week they are still at risk and many are killed before they reach their first birthday by either their fathers or their stepfathers. Overall the figures are high in both developed and developing countries. While a majority of the infants under the age of 1 or below the age of 1 that are killed in developing countries are female the same cannot be said for infants the same age that are killed in developed countries and in the latter th

Infanticide or infant homicide is defined as the act of killing a child within a year of the child’s birth. While it is a crime that is mostly associated to developing countries or third world countries or countries that are still lagging behind the rest of the world, it is not unusual to come across cases of infanticide in countries that do not fit the tag or label of developing countries and that tends to suggest that there are various other causes or factors that compels the offender to commit the crime other than just poverty. Technically while it is murder, because the intention to kill is or was always there, in most of these cases it is clear that the parents or parent intended to kill the child, the accused may still have a defense under diminished responsibility because the intention to kill may have been brought on by a psychiatric illness. Now it is worth remembering that diminished responsibility is different from insanity and despite what most people may or may

In R v Thornton (1996) the victim was particularly abusive towards his wife and on the day in question he threw his wife out of the house after abusing her together with a suitcase filled with her clothes. She returned later that day and tried to patch things up and the victim was even more abusive towards her. She then went into the kitchen and grabbed hold of a kitchen knife and she tried to patch things up again but her husband continued to be abusive and finally she stabbed him in the stomach with the kitchen knife and killed him. She was charged with murder and at her trial she raised the defense of diminished responsibility but she did not raise the defense of provocation. The judge however did direct the jury on provocation. The jury convicted the accused for murder and the accused appeal. Her appeal was allowed on the grounds that she suffered from a syndrome called battered women’s syndrome. From the decisions in the above cases we can come to the conclusion tha