From the first paragraph: "...they often say that... they didn’t feel responsible for those actions – they “lost control”.... In the UK, under certain circumstances, a person accused of murder can even claim that this “loss of control” led to them killing their victim. If successful, this defence can reduce charges to manslaughter."
I am surprised at this line defense (not a lawyer, of course).
At the risk of creating a falsely binary division, either we are (at least most of the time) responsible adults or we are not. If we are, then we are responsible for our actions - even if our faculties are temporarily impaired, at least by virtue of actions we took. For example, driving while under the influence.
If we are not, then why do we have other privileges, such as voting, being able to care for children, etc?
Of course, there are middle grounds of various kinds and the law must find and work with these. Any sort of diminished capacity defence, e.g., by virtue of illness (e.g., depression), by virtue of mental disability, etc.
It seems to me that these middle grounds arise because there are discernible pathologies that give rise to diminished capacity. That seems reasonable.
Where the UK defence seems odd, seems to fly in the face of responsibility, is that there is no pathology. Someone got angry and lost control.
But anger is a choice. With the possible exception of the immature, of the previously mentioned disabled, and of cases involving actual physical contact (where someone isn't respecting your boundaries and your expressed wish that they back off), we choose anger as our response. It can be very hard to control this choice, but we are choosing to allow anger to rise.
Once we make that choice, we are responsible for what comes next. IM(NS)HO. YMMV. IANAL. Etc.
About jurisprudential tool from modern Russia's early years:
An interesting solution to the dilemma in your last paragraph was invented by people who wrote first laws after USSR collapsed.
While any kind of self defence was forbidden by law, moreover lethal one, it was expected that in a moment of mortal danger, a person temporarily looses his mental fitness for legal purposes, thus having no responsibility for his actions during that.
Isn't there a distinction between manslaughter and a premeditated murder in most jurisdictions? Where I'm from, impulsively killing someone in a burst of anger ("a crime of passion") is definitely different from a cold-blooded murder in the eyes of the law.
In the US, premeditation is the distinction between 1st and 2nd degree murder.
Manslaughter is a lesser offense, for when there was no intent of homicide but the perpetrator is nonetheless responsible: say someone decides to juggle axes on a balcony and drops one on someone’s head.
Probably most of the time, but not in extreme cases. Maybe the anger that you experienced always fell within these boundaries.
Have you ever had a situation where your whole world fell apart?
In some extreme situations, your brain seems to be unable to process what is going on. Everything feels like a bad dream, not real. In such a situation, you can have a trigger where all of a sudden it feels like your brain is short-circuiting. There is no reasoning at that point, all you can do is try to keep it together as much as possible. I hope you never need to experience this. But anyone who did experience this, understands how tragedies can happen in the worst circumstances.
I am surprised at this line defense (not a lawyer, of course).
At the risk of creating a falsely binary division, either we are (at least most of the time) responsible adults or we are not. If we are, then we are responsible for our actions - even if our faculties are temporarily impaired, at least by virtue of actions we took. For example, driving while under the influence.
If we are not, then why do we have other privileges, such as voting, being able to care for children, etc?
Of course, there are middle grounds of various kinds and the law must find and work with these. Any sort of diminished capacity defence, e.g., by virtue of illness (e.g., depression), by virtue of mental disability, etc.
It seems to me that these middle grounds arise because there are discernible pathologies that give rise to diminished capacity. That seems reasonable.
Where the UK defence seems odd, seems to fly in the face of responsibility, is that there is no pathology. Someone got angry and lost control.
But anger is a choice. With the possible exception of the immature, of the previously mentioned disabled, and of cases involving actual physical contact (where someone isn't respecting your boundaries and your expressed wish that they back off), we choose anger as our response. It can be very hard to control this choice, but we are choosing to allow anger to rise.
Once we make that choice, we are responsible for what comes next. IM(NS)HO. YMMV. IANAL. Etc.