LAW162 Criminal Law Assignment

1. Yan-Wei, a 70-year-old woman, runs a successful retail business in Liverpool selling Asian groceries.  Every day leading up to the event described below, Yan-Wei would take the cash receipts to her  bank, located 100 meters from her shop. She routinely walked there through the bustling shopping  strip at about 2.30 pm, carrying the cash in a tote bag slung over her shoulder. 
2. Mikey is an ice addict. He worked in a shop across the road from Yan-Wei’s shop until he was sacked  for stealing from his employer. Mikey is now dependent on government welfare and is desperate for  cash to feed his habit. Mikey recalled that Yan-Wei, an older woman of small stature, walked to the  bank with a tote bag every day at the same time. Clearly, that bag must contain the cash takings.  
3. Mikey decided that taking the bag from Yan-Wei would be easy. His plan was that he would wait at  the bus stop where he had a clear view of Yan-Wei’s shop and when she left the shop to walk to the  bank, he would sprint past and yank the tote bag from her shoulder and keep running around the  corner where he could get lost in the crowd of the mall. Easy! No-one gets hurt! 
4. At 2.28 pm, on 24th October 2022, Mikey was waiting at the bus stop, ready to execute his plan.  When Yan-Wei exited her shop and headed towards the bank. Mikey sprinted towards Yan-Wei and  as he reached her, he grabbed the bag. The bag was slung over her left shoulder, but Yan-Wei was  holding onto it with her right hand. The bag did not slide off her shoulder. Instead, when Mikey  pulled the bag, Yan-Wei was spun around by the force. Mikey was surprised by this and frustrated  that Yan-Wei didn’t simply let go of the bag. He pulled at the bag again, harder, and with a twisting  motion, and at the same time with his other hand, he shoved Yan-Wei with all his strength, in the  direction of the roadway. Mikey didn’t want to hurt the woman, but he also realized that forcefully  shoving a small elderly woman would probably cause her some injury, especially if she fell over from  the force. (He recalled his own grandmother had broken her pelvis from a simple fall. She was  hospitalized but never recovered, dying a month later.) Still, it couldn’t be helped. He had to get that  bag! The simultaneous pulling and shoving worked, and the bag twisted free of Yan-Wei’s grip. Yan Wei was propelled backwards by the force of the shove three meters onto the roadway and into the  path of a bus traveling at 40 kph. The bus driver had no chance to stop in time before impacting Yan-Wei. 
5. Yan-Wei was taken to hospital with internal injuries from the impact with the bus. Despite  competently performing surgery, doctors were unable to stop the internal bleeding and Yan-Wei  died on the operating table. It turned out that Yan-Wei had suffered two previous strokes and she  took a blood-thinning medication, Warfarin, to help prevent further episodes. Yan-Wei actually took  double the prescribed dose, in the belief that this gave her extra protection from strokes. The  medical pathologist who performed the autopsy opined that if Yan-Wei had not taken such a high  dose of Warfarin, the surgeons would have been able to control the bleeding and she would most  likely have survived. The pathologist also reported other injuries unrelated to the impact with the  bus. Yan-Wei suffered a broken left clavicle (collar bone), dislocated left shoulder and torn muscles  and ligaments around the left shoulder joint. The broken clavicle was caused by a blunt force trauma  to the upper chest (ie, the very forceful push) and the shoulder and joint injuries caused by twisting  of the arm against the direction of the push when the bag was pulled from her body. 
6. Is Mickey criminally liable for any offenses on the foregoing facts? In relation to  the death of Yan-Wei, explain why Mikey is or is not liable for murder, manslaughter or statutory manslaughter. Bearing in mind that charges can be  presented to the jury as alternatives, make sure that you cover all arguable  possibilities for convicting for murder and manslaughter.

Marking Criteria 

• The answer addresses the question/s 
• Identification of issues  
• Identification of relevant law – quality of research  
• Discussion of the relevant law – demonstrates nuanced understanding of  the applicable case law and legislation 
• Application of law to facts – demonstrates nuanced understanding of how  the law applies in context 
• Structure – contains a concise introduction and conclusion, content is  organized coherently, headings and subheadings used appropriately 
• Presentation – quality of written expression, free of grammatical,  punctuation and spelling errors 
• AGLC4 compliance. 

Marks will not be awarded separately for each of these criteria. Rather, marks  will be awarded for each issue, taking these criteria into account globally.  

FAQs 

How should I go about answering the question?  

I strongly recommend that you use the IRAC method.  

1. Issue: Identify the particular legal issue. 
2. Rule: Discuss the law applicable to that issue, remembering to cite the relevant  legal authority (cases and legislation). 
3. Application: Apply the law to the facts. 
4. Conclusion: Make a conclusion about the issue.  

Repeat this process for each issue identified. 

What are the most common mistakes when answering hypothetical  assignments? 

The most serious and quite common mistakes are: 

• Insufficient detail in discussion of the law: The slides are not a sufficient  foundation for the assignment. Students need to demonstrate nuanced  understanding of the applicable legislation and case law. In the case of the latter,  that involves reading the cases. Once you’ve identified the key cases you need,  please read them. Do not rely on extracts in the text. 
• Not reading the facts and the question with sufficient care. If you misread the  facts, you are likely to miss issues altogether or misapply them. You also need to consider the question carefully. If the question asks about offenses committed by  Jane there are no marks available for discussing offenses committed by Mary. 

• Missing issues: there will be marks designated for each issue. If you don’t  recognise and deal with an issue you lose a chunk of potential marks. 
• The scattergun approach: another common error involves summarizing everything  covered in the unit regarding the law relating to the issue. This is an error because  it is only the relevant law that needs to be discussed and a scattergun approach  conveys to the marker that the student doesn’t know which bits of the law are  relevant.  
• Failing to apply the law: Following discussion of the law, many students purport  to apply it by saying something like, ‘obviously, that applies to this case.’ That is  not application of law; it is a conclusion. Once the applicable law has been  identified, it is applied by identifying the particular fact or combination of facts  that bring a scenario within the scope of the rule and then subjecting those facts  to the rule. Ouch, sounds hard! The cases contain countless illustrations of how  it is done. That is why reading them is so important. 

How will I know what the issues are? 

Being able to recognise the existence of legal issues is a core legal skill. If you  do the readings, engage with the unit resources, and read the relevant cases,  you will be able to recognise the legal issues in the factual scenario. To be  blunt, almost anyone with a search engine could tell you about the law on a  basic legal point. The important skills taught at law school involve recognising  legal issues and applying law to the facts. Both of these skills come from  reading cases.  

You should say something about each element of the offenses you consider,  but you do not need to discuss an element in depth if it is entirely  straightforward and obvious (in which case, it won’t be ‘an issue’).  

How much research will I have to do? 

Most of the cases required for answering this question are discussed (although  not necessarily extracted) in the textbook, listed in the required readings or  discussed in the lectures. Recommended cases are also an important resource.  Research might help you find other relevant cases.  

How should I present my answer? 

Your answer should be written in grammatically correct prose. Referencing  should be compliant with the AGLC (4th ed). Ensure that spelling is correct in  Australian English. 

I recommend that students ensure that word processing software defaults to  Australian English and that a spell checker and grammar checker are used  before the document is submitted.  

Wasting words 

There is nothing to be gained from repeating the facts of the question.  

There is nothing to be gained from repeating the facts of other cases. Doing  this will create the impression that, although you realize that there is a factual  analogy between the case and the facts in the question, you don’t understand  the legal principles from the case, and you don’t know how to apply them to  the facts. 

There is nothing to be gained from quoting entire sections of legislation.  Doing this will create the impression that you don’t really understand the  legislation because you can’t put its effect concisely into your own words.  

Help! It’s literally impossible to answer the question within the word limit! 

Meeting word limits is always tough, but it is always possible to answer the  question to the HD standard within the word limit. Below are my tips for managing  the word count: 

• Are all of your issues really relevant to these facts? 
• Make sure that your structure is coherent and doesn't require repetition. 
• Paraphrase concisely, rather than use direct quotes (paraphrasing is also  preferable because the marker can see that you understand - a direct quote does  not convey understanding). 
• Use headings and subheadings. 
• Some students write beautifully with rich adjectives and adverbs. Conversely, legal  writing is crisp, yet grammatically correct. Consider whether your adjectives and  adverbs are necessary. 
• Develop a crisp sentence structure, eg, from a past student dealing with a  question about grounds for appeal: 'I have addressed only the issues I think are  relevant to get up on appeal, and yet keep exceeding the word limit by hundreds.'  Word count: 24, could be redrafted without loss of content as: 'I have addressed  only relevant appellate issues, yet the word count is exceeded by hundreds.' Word  count: 15. 

Conversely, if your final draft is hundreds of words below the word limit, you  have a different kind of problem. The word limit is an indication of the amount  of detail expected, given the number of issues. If you have hundreds of words  to spare, you might have missed one or more issues, or you might need to  consider the issues in more detail.