New laws on killer wives 'won't work'

Government plans to reform murder laws to help women who kill abusive partners are " fundamentally inept" and will backfire, one of the country's top legal experts warned today.

Cambridge University law professor John Spencer said the proposed changes were of "questionable wisdom and justice" and would not work in practice.

The changes will give women killers who have been "seriously wronged" by their victims a new partial defence against a murder charge. He said the result would be more life sentences, not fewer, leaving murder laws in "an even bigger mess".

Professor Spencer's criticisms will add to the debate about the changes which were unveiled by Labour's deputy leader Harriet Harman and the Ministry of Justice in July.

The reforms were prompted by high- profile cases such as those of Sara Thornton and Kiranjit Ahluwalia, who killed their husbands after years of abuse. Both women had their murder convictions commuted to manslaughter.

Ms Harman said the reforms, which will also abolish the " provocation" defence used by men to justify so-called "crimes of passion", would lead to greater fairness.

However, critics fear they could lead to "gang law" and allow some killers to escape proper justice. Professor Spencer, who has set out his criticisms in the legal journal Archbold News, conceded that the current law on murder, which stipulates a mandatory life sentence, was "unsatisfactory". But he warned the proposed changes would make matters worse.

The proposed new defence for killers who had been "seriously wronged" or who are "in fear of serious violence" still require the defendant to have "lost self-control" when carrying out the act.

This, said Professor Spencer, meant that "a woman who assassinates her abusive partner while he is asleep" would not be covered by the new defence - because she would not have lost her self-control - and would be convicted of murder. At present she could escape with a manslaughter conviction.

Hesaid two further flaws were the decisions to curb the defence of diminished responsibility for those who killed "in hot blood" and the rejection of proposals by the Law Commission for murder to be split into first and second-degree offences. He said this would have allowed a proper distinction to be made between killers who might deserve some sympathy and others who deserved a life term. By adopting only some of the commission's ideas, ministers had created a "hubless wheel".

Professor Spencer added: "It is fundamentally inept to keep the mandatory life sentence for the crime of murder, as currently defined, and try to frame a fussy law identifying in advance those cases where the life sentence would be unreasonably severe. The obvious solution is to abolish the mandatory life sentence and give the judge a discretion."