Section 54 - Exclusion of benefit of provocation

(1) Despite proof on behalf of the accused person of a matter of extreme provocation, the criminal offence shall not be reduced to manslaughter if it appears

(a) that the accused person was not in fact deprived of the power of self-control by the provocation; or

(b) that the accused person acted wholly or partly from a previous intention to cause death or harm, or to engage in an unlawful fight, whether or not the accused person would have acted on that purpose at the time or in the manner in which the accused person did act but for the provocation; or

(c) that, after provocation was given, and before the accused did the act which caused the harm, a time elapsed or circumstances occurred that an ordinary person might have recovered self-control; or

(d) that the accused person acted in a manner, in respect of the instrument or means used or of the cruel or other manner in which it was used, in which an ordinary person would not, under the circumstances, have been likely to act.

(2) For the purposes of subsection (1), “an ordinary person” means an ordinary person of the community to which the accused belongs.

(3) Where a person, in the course of a fight, uses a deadly or dangerous means against an adversary who has not used or commenced to use a deadly or dangerous means against that person, the accused person shall be presumed to have used the means from a previous intention to cause death, although, before the actual use of the means, the accused person may have received a blow or hurt in the fight that might amount to extreme provocation.

(4) Subsection (3) applies if it appears that the accused person intended or prepared to use those means before the accused person had received a blow or hurt in the fight that might be a sufficient provocation to use means of that kind.

Illustrations

1. Subsection (1) (b) A, who has long been seeking an occasion to fight in a deadly manner with B, kills B. Here, if the jury think that A engineered a situation of being in B’s way for the purpose of taking an opportunity which might occur to fight with B, the criminal offence of A is not reduced to manslaughter by reason of the blow which A received from B.

2. A receives a slight blow from a weaker man, B, and beats and kicks B to death. A’s criminal offence is not reduced to manslaughter.