Acting recently as an expert witness in a murder trial, I became aware of a small legal problem caused by the increasingly multi

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问题 Acting recently as an expert witness in a murder trial, I became aware of a small legal problem caused by the increasingly multicultural nature of our society. According to English law, a man is guilty of murder if he kills someone with the intention either to kill or to injure seriously. But he is guilty of the lesser crime of manslaughter if he has been sufficiently provoked or if his state of mind at the time was abnormal enough to reduce his responsibility. The legal test here is a comparison with the supposedly ordinary man—the man on the Clapham omnibus, as the legal cliche has it. Would that ordinary person feel provoked under similar circumstances? Was the accused’ s state of mind at the time of the killing very different from that of an average man?

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答案 最近,我在一个谋杀案的审讯中作为专业证人出庭。在这个过程中,我开始意识到一个由文化逐渐多元的社会所带来的法律小问题。根据英国法律,如果一个人出于故意杀害或伤害的目的杀人,他就是有罪的。不过,如果当时他处于严重被激怒的状态,或者他的精神状态十分异常导致他所付的责任应当减少,他同样是有罪的,可犯的却是指控较轻的误杀罪。这里所使用的法律测试是将被告与一个被认为是普通人的人作比较,用法律术语说,也就是“在案件那种特定的情况下一个正常理智的人”。在相似的情形下,这个普通理智的人是否也会被激怒?被告在杀人的瞬间,精神状态是否与一般人非常不同?

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