Call to limit charge of manslaughter in road traffic cases

Motorists who cause fatal road traffic collisions should not be prosecuted for manslaughter except in extreme cases, according to a consultation paper to be published by the Law Reform Commission today.

The commission also recommends that some forms of killing currently prosecuted as manslaughter should be treated as assault instead.

In a consultation paper on involuntary manslaughter, the commission, while recommending a number of specific amendments, concludes that the current law is satisfactory.

Manslaughter is defined as any unlawful killing that is not murder and consists of two categories, voluntary manslaughter and involuntary manslaughter.

Voluntary manslaughter generally describes what would otherwise be murder but where there is an excusing circumstance, such as provocation.

Involuntary manslaughter comprises manslaughter by an unlawful and dangerous act, where the killing involves an act constituting a criminal offence such as an assault, and manslaughter by gross negligence.

The best-known recent example is Wayne O'Donoghue, who in 2005 received a four-year sentence for the unlawful and dangerous act of manslaughter of Robert Holohan.

The commission recommends that low levels of deliberate violence should be removed from the scope of unlawful and dangerous act manslaughter and be prosecuted as assaults instead.

This would mean that a person who pushes someone, causing him to fall and fatally hit his head off the ground, would be charged with assault rather than manslaughter. Judges would still take into account the fact that a death occurred, when imposing sentence.

In another type of involuntary manslaughter, involving gross negligence, the commission recommends that the current test should be amended so that a person would only be liable for gross negligence if he was mentally and physically capable of avoiding the risk of substantial personal injury.

Another recommendation states that the specific offence of dangerous driving causing death should continue to exist alongside the more serious offence of manslaughter.

People involved in road deaths would only be prosecuted for manslaughter in extreme cases of very high culpability.

It cites an example of a manager of a trucking company in England who was convicted of manslaughter after one of his trucks crashed and killed three people after he had paid employees bonuses for driving longer shifts than were prescribed in law.

Mr Justice Nicholas Kearns will launch the paper this evening. Submissions on its provisional recommendations are invited by the end of July.