Ryan v The Queen
High Court of Australia · 1967
Ryan v The Queen (1967) 121 CLR 205
His finger tightened on the trigger before he knew it, he said. Which act does the law ask about?
In New South Wales, self-induced intoxication has been removed from the voluntariness inquiry by statute. Section 428G(1) of the Crimes Act 1900 (NSW) provides that "[i]n determining whether a person has committed an offence, evidence of self-induced intoxication cannot be taken into account in determining whether the relevant conduct was voluntary"; s 428G(2) preserves the position where intoxication was not self-induced. Macfarlan JA (R A Hulme and Wilson JJ agreeing) sets the section out and notes that it "is concerned with the determination of whether the relevant conduct was voluntary" rather than with mens rea -- and quotes Brennan J's statement, itself citing Barwick CJ in Ryan, that "voluntariness and general intent are distinct mental states". That is the same distinction Ryan draws, now with a statutory bar on one route to it. Other jurisdictions have their own intoxication provisions; identify the applicable one rather than generalising.
What happened?
Ryan, aged 20, robbed a service station at night. He had a loaded and cocked .22 rifle with the safety catch off, held in one hand while he tried to tie up the attendant, Taylor, with the other. Taylor made a sudden movement. The rifle discharged and killed him. Ryan's case was that the pressure of his finger on the trigger was an involuntary reflex produced by that movement, and that the jury should have been directed to acquit of both murder and manslaughter if they so found. He was convicted of murder.
What did the Court decide?
The application for special leave was dismissed. The reasons differ, and the difference is the point of the case.
Taylor and Owen JJ accepted the principle and rejected its application. "Where ... the act which causes the wounding is not, in any relevant sense, the act of the accused", a charge based on it would fail, and where death resulted the accused "would not be guilty either of murder or of manslaughter for the simple reason that it was not his act that caused the death" (at 231). But here "the wounding and death were caused by a combination of acts done in pursuance of the design to commit the robbery".
Barwick CJ took a different route. A jury "having concluded that the discharge of the gun was involuntary could have concluded that the act causing death was the presentation of the cocked, loaded gun with a safety catch unapplied" (at 219), and identifying the act causing death "required specific and close consideration" — which the summing up had not given it.
Windeyer J did not need the widening question, because on his view the trigger press was itself voluntary. Phrases like "reflex action" and "automatic reaction" "can, if used imprecisely and unscientifically, be, like 'blackout', mere excuses", with "no real application to the case of a fully conscious man who has put himself in a situation in which he has his finger on the trigger of a loaded rifle levelled at another man": pressing it "in immediate response to a sudden threat or apprehension of danger ... is, it seems to me, a consequence probable and foreseeable of a conscious apprehension of danger, and in that sense a voluntary act" (at 245). His Honour distinguished compulsion, where the will is exercised but under pressure, from convulsions or sleep-walking, where the actor could not refrain or did not know what he was doing — neither of which fitted this case.
Proposition
What is the principle?
A homicide requires a voluntary — that is, willed — act of the accused, and voluntariness is a quality of the act rather than of the accused's intention. But the question can only be answered once the relevant act has been identified, and that is where these cases are decided. The act causing death may be a complex of acts, or a deliberate earlier act, rather than the movement said to have been a reflex — so the answer turns on which act the charge and the summing up fix on.
Why does this case matter?
Because the accused won the principle and lost the application, and not only on the doctrine. This was a special leave application, and how the case had been run below mattered. Barwick CJ was critical of the summing up, but the defence at trial had been "deliberately framed", the applicant "has had such advantages as were sought to be gained by it", and his Honour concluded the jury had not believed the account of the discharge (at 220). Taylor and Owen JJ likewise noted the argument had not been raised below.
So keep the reasons for refusing leave apart from the competing analyses of the merits. Only the second is what the case is cited for, and a student who reads the outcome as an endorsement of any one judge's reasoning has read it wrong.
Exam and application relevance
Identify the act said to be involuntary, and do not stop there: the task is to identify a voluntary act of the accused that in law caused the death. Preceding deliberate acts do not automatically answer the argument, and neither does the label attached to the movement — argue about which act the law is looking at, and why.
Keep voluntariness and intention apart. Panic, or being very drunk, may bear on whether an accused formed an intention; whether the act was willed is a different inquiry, and Ryan warns against treating rapid, impulsive action as unwilled. In New South Wales, s 428G(1) of the Crimes Act 1900 removes self-induced intoxication from the voluntariness question entirely; other jurisdictions have their own provisions, so name the one that applies.
Check your understanding
Your client's finger genuinely moved before he could stop it. Name two reasons that might still not be enough.