The Blip Blop Blog (Team Entity)

16) Equity will not perfect an imperfect gift. With regards to gifts unless some form of consideration has been given equity will not intervene or compel the donor or his estate to make good on a gratuitous promise. There are however certain exceptions to this maxim for example the rule in Strong v Bird (1874) – where the donor intends to pass his property to another and maintains that intention until his death but for some reason or other fails to make the transfer during his lifetime, the property becomes vested in the intended donee as the donor’s executor, and the vesting of the property is deemed to be or is seen as completing the gift. Copyright © 2019 by Dyarne Jessica Ward

The Othello Syndrome takes its name after the Shakespearean play Othello where Othello kills his beautiful wife Desdemona because he believed that she was unfaithful. In the play Desdemona never cheats on Othello but he thinks that she has and he murders her. The phrase in modern day crime is used in reference to husbands and male partners who kill their wives or partners, often in a fit of rage, because they believe them to be either unfaithful or disloyal. Does the Othello Syndrome differ from a crime of passion? The answer in short is yes. In a crime of passion the accused can kill either his or her spouse or his or her partner or the person that he or she is with. Both men and women can commit a crime of passion. The case of R v Cunningham (1981) tells us that the accused can claim that he or she committed a crime of passion in the hope of mitigating the crime or being given a lesser sentence. The defense, not that it is a recognized defense in the normal sense of th

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