... become clinically depressed. Peter hitting and telling Sandra that she is a hopeless wife and inadequate mother is enough to provoke her behaviour. It was ruled in the case of Doughty (1986) that the continuous crying of a baby is enough to provoke a person. Provocation comes under the Homicide Act 1957 in section 3. Therefore Sandra may rely on a partial defence of provocation to murder only, it reduces the charge of murder to manslaughter To determine if Sandra was provoked it needs to be determined if she was provoked enough to lose her self control, for this defence there needs to be a 'sudden loss of control' as stated by Lord Devlin in R v Duffy (1999) where the defendant killed her husband just after being savagely beaten by him. Peter caused Sandra to lose her self control which in turn led her to grab the marble statuette ...

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