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Originally Posted by WOW!USaidSomethingSmart!
I get it now, I thought the suspension period was the same as the sentence so I was confused on what was going on there. I know you can run circles around me in law, so I feel you're the best person on this site to ask: as you said, whatever her mental health illness was, it wasn't severe enough to get her hospital treatment. Given that, could the men falsely accused sue her in a civil court (assuming they cant in the criminal court)? The amount of evidence is lower in civil courts, so would her mental illness have a greater weight in her defense or would it be treated the same as in the current case? I have the feeling it would be treated the same but since the men would need to meet a lower benchmark for evidence, would the mental illness be above or below that? Obviously this requires knowing what her condition is and I'm assuming you don't know it (I don't either) but in general, what would you expect?
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No problem - happy to help.
It helps justify the tuition fees for one thing!
To answer your question above, from what I have been able to find my understanding would be that while it would be raised as a mitigating factor in limiting any damages awardable, it would be unlikely to negate her liability until it could be shown that the difficulties mentioned limited her capacity. In other words, if they meant that on the balance of probabilities she was unaware that a wrong had been committed (in this case defamation by way of slander) then it would be an absolute defence against liability. That would however depend upon the exact details of what the difficulties were, so it's difficult to say whether it would be above or below the 51% required. It would still have the same weight as in the criminal courts - the Civil Procedure Rules do not differ on that if I recall correctly - but it all comes down to what the medical evidence suggests. None of this would prevent the men from bringing a claim against her, but they would impact upon the likely success of such claims.
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Originally Posted by WOW!USaidSomethingSmart!
By the way, I noticed you're in the UK, so is there an abbreviation of NCRMD or NCR for "not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder" or "not criminally responsible", or is it something else?
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We still have the rather archaic "not guilty by reason of insanity" or insanity defence, which is basically the same thing - it stems from the M'Naghten Rules much like most common law approaches do. We also have a subdivision for murder called "not guilty by reason of diminished responsibility" which reduces it to manslaughter and another mitigating factor called "state of temporary mental impairment" which can depending on the circumstances result in either reduction of sentence or acquittal. It's very convoluted and not without a lot of criticism, particularly as none of them have a particularly strong medical basis. The whole area has been recommended for reform on a number of occasions but has never made it through Parliament unfortunately.