Murder; Manslaughter: Alternative Verdicts: R v Coutts [2006] UKHL 39

This was an appeal to the House of Lords following the decision of the Court of Appeal not to quash the appellant’s conviction for murder. The 31-year-old victim had been strangled with a pair of tights. Her body had then been kept in a storage unit for several weeks before it was found, badly burned, in woodland. The appellant had been convicted of murder. His contention was that the victim had died during consensual asphyxial sexual intercourse during a sex game. The prosecution argued the case on the basis of intentional killing. At the time, both defence and prosecution counsel were of the view that it would not be in the interests of justice to leave the offence of manslaughter to the jury, the appellant preferring to take his chances with a ‘murder or nothing’ verdict rather than accepting the strong possibility of a manslaughter conviction.