On Wednesday, 30th September the YSJ Student Law Society held their first internal moot competition. The case debated was R v Stubbs. In this case, the defendant was charged with manslaughter due to supplying fatal drugs to the deceased.

Due to the current government guidelines, the moot was conducted over microsoft Teams as well as in person, in order to operate under the guidelines. However, this did not affect the professionalism of the students as each side gave concise and clear arguments with regard to the side they were representing.

Annabelle Lee and Abigail Hewitt were the representatives for the respondents. Their argument stated that there was indeed an unlawful act of supplying the drugs despite the defendant not injecting the drugs into the deceased herself. They went on to discuss how the unlawful act may have amounted to assault or the unlawful act being an offence under OAPA. They used legislation from the Misuse of Drugs Act to support these ideas, moving for upholding the conviction and disallowing the appeal.

Chris Heale and Lauren Kelly were the representatives for the appellant. Their line of argument was that there was no unlawful act as the deceased died as a result of their own self-injection, not the appellant’s words or actions, as Parkes J held. They attempted to convince the court the defendant should be considered not guilty in respect of the offence charged.

Senior Lecturer and Lecturer Chris Smith and Kat Langley were also present to give the verdict on the outcome of the moot. The appellants won the moot, on the basis that an appeal would be allowed on the first and second ground. Kat also gave some constructive criticism, as she stated there should be polishing of the submissions made in order to make them clearer to the court.

I would like to thank each of the students who took part in the moot. The first moot after the summer was bound to be daunting! Thanks also to Chris and Kat for their professional opinions – the next moot will be even better !

We can’t wait for the next moot, which will be held on the 21st October.

Holly Boothby, Secretary of YSJ Student Law Society 2020-21