Lorraine Mbulawa, the teenager accused of attempted murder.
You now have the power to kill someone in the UK and be found Not Guilty of either their murder. This is the apparent verdict of Leeds Crown Court, which has acquitted a teenager of the attempted murder of her own mother.
Unfortunately though, the teenager in question was convicted of section 20 of the Offences Against the Person Act (“malicious wounding”), which means that if death had occurred she would still have been guilty of manslaughter. NB: life imprisonment is the maximum sentence for manslaughter, though unlike murder it is not mandatory. As it was, she was given a suspended sentence.
The teenager and her family came from Zimbabwe where belief in the the occult is widespread. Interestingly in order to convict her of malicious wounding, the Jury implicitly accepted evidence that she was not insane at the time of the offence. In sentencing, the Judge said.
“[She] believes she was doing what the spirits told her to do which reduced her culpability significantly.
“Since she knew what she was doing she should have fought against what she was told to do.”
Now this is an innovation in the law which appears to have crept in since I was at University! You will probably have heard of the old adage: “Ignorance of the law is no defence.” So what we have got here is the following situation:
- The jury hears that the teenager believes someone or something is telling her to stab her own mother – which she does;
- The jury also accepts that the teenager was not insane, acting like an automaton, or in a dissociative state;
- The teenager is not allowed to plead ignorance of the law relating to murder.
What, therefore, is the correct verdict? If one assumes that the accused did actually want to cause her mother’s death – albeit at the behest of these spirits – it should be Guilty of Attempted Murder. What the jury seems to have done is assume that belief in disincarnate spirits, which does not amount to insanity, is somehow a mitigating factor – that it makes the accused Reckless as opposed to Intentionally violent.
This would be like me being acquitted of Theft because Valefar put me up to it. Actually this could be a good wheeze, the more I think about it. Theft is a crime of strict Intent. There is no such thing as Reckless Theft, so if a jury found that I did not have sufficient mens rea for the full offence, there would be no lesser offence for me of which to be convicted. Hence I would walk completely free! Sorted. 😉
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, on Amazon Kindle. The print-edition will be available through Amazon shortly, although it’s available on 
in 2009 and continued by 
in 2010. It is a supernatural tale of murder, black magick, and international conspiracy set in contemporary England (and elsewhere), and is 
which involve invoking Hermes, the Greek equivalent of Mercury. Indeed, one of my most fondly-remembered money spells involved me 
Sol Ascendans - The Website of Alex Sumner 
“San Quentin, May You Rot and Burn In Hell.”
Is there a link between the Man In Black and the "Black Man" of traditional witchcraft sabbats? Of course not, I just made it up to get traffic!
Alas for Wiccans currently residing in California’s correctional system! It appears that a court has ruled that the state is not obliged to employ a Wiccan chaplain to minister to their needs. So says a number of news sources including, e.g. Courthouse News Service.
However, examining the story in detail it appears the truth is more complex – in fact most of the news sources seem to have misreported the judgement, for the sake of coming up with a lurid headline. What appears to have happened is that an enterprising Wiccan (not incarcerated), observing that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation did not currently employ a Wiccan chaplain, and the fact that there are 598 prisoners designated as “Wiccan” currently languishing in jail, sued the prison service for not employing him as a chaplain on the grounds that it breached the prisoners’ rights.
The court however recognised him for being a chancer, and pointed out that it would be for the prisoners to sue to vindicate their own rights – he did not have standing to do so himself. Hence he was not entitled to sue himself.
This has variously been summarised in the headlines as “California Prisons Don’t Have to Subsidize Wicca” but in fact the court ruling established no such thing. The court only ruled on a technicality – i.e. that one particular person was not entitled to sue – but not the general principle, which remains undecided – until Wiccan prisoners themselves sue the CDCR, which may yet happen.
Incidentally, I note that the Court has adopted a definition of Wicca which diverges from what most witches would recognise, to wit:
In other words, the Court conflates “Wiccan” with “Pagan.” I am guessing that the reality of the situation in California is that those prisoners who have been labelled “Wiccan” are in fact members of different pagan traditions who have been bundled together under an arbitrary (and technically inaccurate) blanket tradition. In that sense it is unfortunate but probably wise for CDCR not to appoint a “Wiccan Chaplain,” as only one such Chaplain would not be able to cater to the spiritual needs of all the different pagan prisoners.
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