Latest news with #provocation
Irish Times
15-05-2025
- Irish Times
Jury to continue deliberations in case of man accused of murdering his mother
A jury will return to the Central Criminal Court on Friday to continue their deliberations in the trial of a man who denies murdering his mother by strangling and smothering her to death. Nigel Canavan (39) told his trial he acted in self-defence and was provoked by his mother, Angela Canavan (58), who he said told him she wished she'd never had him while assaulting him during a heated argument. The jury has spent more than four hours over two days considering their verdict. Mr Canavan, with an address at Erris Gardens, Crossmolina, Co Mayo, has pleaded not guilty to his mother's murder at her home in St John's Terrace, Co Sligo on May 1st, 2023. Mr Justice Kerida Naidoo has told the jury of 10 women and two men there are three possible verdicts: guilty, not guilty, or not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter. READ MORE Mr Justice Naidoo said murder is made out if the prosecution has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused killed his mother and intended to kill or cause serious harm. However, the jury should return a verdict of manslaughter if they find that Ms Canavan's actions towards her son were a 'genuinely serious provocation' that caused him to suffer a sudden and total loss of self-control. Mr Justice Naidoo said the jury must also consider whether Mr Canavan had acted in self-defence. In his testimony to the trial, Mr Canavan said his mother waved a knife at him and tried to attack him with her hands and feet. State Pathologist Dr SallyAnne Collis detailed bruises to Ms Canavan's face, neck, torso, arms and legs. She also noted a laceration due to blunt force trauma on her head and one of her forearms. She had three fractured ribs and stab wounds to each thigh. Dr Collis said the cause of death was asphyxiation due to smothering and strangling, and that death would have taken minutes. Mr Canavan said that his mother stabbed herself in the thighs with a steak knife and suggested the fractured ribs could have been caused by a fall his mother had earlier in the week of her death. He described using his forearm against his mother's neck to push her away and said that she died in his presence.
CNA
15-05-2025
- CNA
Maid who stabbed 70-year-old woman 26 times gets murder conviction reduced on appeal
SINGAPORE: A maid serving a life sentence for murdering her employer's 70-year-old mother-in-law when she was 17 has successfully appealed against her conviction. Zin Mar Nwe, now 24, was originally found guilty of murder after a trial and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2023. On Wednesday (May 15), the Court of Appeal allowed her partial defence on the grounds of grave and sudden provocation. This meant her murder charge was reduced to one of culpable homicide not amounting to murder. Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon delivered the decision on behalf of a three-judge panel also comprising Justices Tay Yong Kwang and See Kee Oon. "Given the particular circumstances of this accused person, in particular her youth, the challenges of her indebtedness to her employment agent and her fear of being repatriated in these circumstances, we think a reasonable person situated as the accused person was could reasonably have been similarly provoked," he said. Parties will return to court at a later date to make submissions on the sentence. Culpable homicide is punishable with life imprisonment, or up to 20 years in prison with a fine. As Zin Mar Nwe is a woman, she cannot be caned. The maid, who is from Myanmar, stabbed the victim in June 2018 after the elderly woman threatened to send her back to her agent. The victim was watching television when Zin Mar Nwe knifed her 26 times until she stopped moving. The maid then retrieved her belongings, washed the knife and changed before fleeing. She was arrested at her employment agency. There is a gag order on the identities of the victim, her family members and the location of the incident. FINDINGS ON MAID ABUSE Grave and sudden provocation is one of the exceptions under which culpable homicide is not murder. Establishing this defence involves consideration of whether a person sharing similar characteristics with and in the same situation as the offender would be deprived of self-control by the provocation. To this end, the Court of Appeal considered the trial judge's findings on whether Zin Mar Nwe was abused by the victim prior to the killing. Chief Justice Menon said these findings went directly towards the defence of grave and sudden provocation. The trial judge, Justice Andre Maniam, had accepted that the victim hit the maid to get her attention or reprimand her, and that the victim also retaliated when the maid accidentally hurt her on certain occasions. In his judgment, he had said: "I do not believe that the accused would have stabbed the deceased if there were just an isolated statement by the deceased, on the day in question, that the accused would be sent back to the agent. "Rather, that statement was made after a period in which the deceased had scolded, hit, and hurt the accused. He had continued: "But for the threat to send the accused back to the agent, however, the accused would not have stabbed the deceased." Justice Maniam had also accepted that the maid did not report the victim's treatment of her to the rest of the family, and it seemed she was "willing to tolerate such treatment, although she was hurt, sad, and felt unappreciated". "The accused however feared being sent back to the agent (and consequently back to her home country in debt), and when the deceased threatened to do so, that triggered the stabbing." He had further noted that Zin Mar Nwe had told the police she was "very angry" when the victim said those words to her. PARTIES' ARGUMENTS Zin Mar Nwe's appeal was fought by lawyers Josephus Tan and Cory Wong Guo Yean of Invictus Law, who represented her under the Criminal Legal Aid Scheme. Mr Tan argued that the "ingredients" of grave and sudden provocation were already present in the trial and should have been considered by the trial judge. These included the evidence that the maid gave about being abused, her mounting debt with her employment agency and the threat of being sent back to her agency. He also pointed to her young age and the fact that she had already been rejected by two employers since arriving in Singapore in January 2018, which were part of her characteristics and situation at the time. The provocation posed by the victim's threat to send Zin Mar Nwe back to her agency the next day took place against this backdrop, the maid's lawyers argued. It "struck directly at the heart of her dire employment predicament in Singapore", they said in written submissions. "And at the tender age of 17, we suggest that (Zin Mar Nwe) would reasonably not have the appropriate coping mechanisms to deal with or to attenuate the gravity of the provocation," they added. Deputy Public Prosecutors Kumaresan Gohulabalan, Sean Teh and Brian Tan argued that a defence of grave and sudden provocation was not supported by the evidence. Mr Kumaresan argued that the trial judge was wrong to find that the victim had verbally or physically abused Zin Mar Nwe as this was based solely on evidence given by the maid, who was not a credible witness. He pointed out that she never reported the abuse to the rest of the family despite them having a good relationship with her, and did not write about it in her diary even though she candidly recorded her feelings there. The prosecutors also pointed to "radically inconsistent" versions of events that the maid gave, such as an account she gave of two "dark-skinned" men killing the victim before she admitted to the stabbing. However, the Court of Appeal found that Justice Maniam's findings were supported by the weight of evidence, and clearly established the subjective element of the gravity of the provocation. He said the court did not read those findings as extending to acts of alleged abuse that occurred before the day of the killing itself. Chief Justice Menon also noted the "heinous" nature of the knife attack and the absence of a motive for the killing. During the appeal, the prosecution had also acknowledged the trial judge's "troubles" in establishing motive. Addressing the maid's credibility, Chief Justice Menon acknowledged that Zin Mar Nwe initially came up with a false account of how the victim was killed. However, four days after the killing, she gave a "nuanced" account of what had happened – an altercation with the victim and a threat of being sent back to her agent – and the effect this had on her. He said it was "implausible" that she made this up to defend herself when it was not being advanced in her defence until now, and that her account was essentially consistent throughout her trial.
Malay Mail
15-05-2025
- Malay Mail
Maid who stabbed Singapore employer's mum-in-law gets murder charge reduced on provocation appeal
SINGAPORE, May 15 — A 24-year-old domestic worker from Myanmar, Zin Mar Nwe, had her murder charge reduced to culpable homicide yesterday after her lawyers successfully argued that she had been provoked when she stabbed her employer's mother-in-law 26 times in 2018. The Court of Appeal, led by Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, accepted the defence's argument that the 70-year-old victim's threat to send the maid back to her agent constituted grave and sudden provocation that caused the then 17-year-old to lose self-control, The Straits Times reported. Lawyer Josephus Tan argued that the threat carried significant weight as it represented a real possibility of being sent back to Myanmar because it would have been the third time within five months that she had changed employers. The defence contended that the threat occurred against a backdrop of a period during which the deceased had allegedly 'scolded, hit and hurt the accused,' although prosecutors maintained there was no evidence to support claims of physical abuse beyond the maid's own testimony. Menon noted in the court's decision that Zin Mar Nwe was young and feared being sent back to her home country in debt, and that a reasonable person in the same situation would have been similarly provoked. The incident occurred on June 25, 2018, when the two women were alone in the flat, with the maid grabbing a knife from the kitchen and repeatedly stabbing the victim after being threatened with being sent back to the agent. After the stabbing, Zin Mar Nwe left the flat with some cash, attempted to retrieve her passport from her agency, and then roamed around for five hours before returning to the agency where she was arrested. The domestic worker had come to Singapore on January 5, 2018, with a falsified passport stating she was 23 years old — the minimum age for working as a domestic worker in Singapore — when she was actually only 17. During her High Court trial, her previous lawyers had relied on a different partial defence, arguing that she was suffering from a mental condition that diminished her responsibility for her actions, which was rejected by the trial judge. In Singapore, culpable homicide not amounting to murder is punishable by life imprisonment or for up to 20 years, and the case has been adjourned for parties to prepare sentencing arguments.
CNA
14-05-2025
- CNA
Maid who stabbed 70-year-old woman 26 times gets murder charge reduced on appeal
SINGAPORE: A maid serving a life sentence for murdering her employer's 70-year-old mother-in-law when she was 17 has successfully appealed against her conviction. Zin Mar Nwe, now 24, was originally found guilty of murder after a trial and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2023. On Wednesday (May 15), the Court of Appeal allowed her partial defence on the grounds of grave and sudden provocation. This meant her murder charge was reduced to one of culpable homicide not amounting to murder. Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon delivered the decision on behalf of a three-judge panel also comprising Justices Tay Yong Kwang and See Kee Oon. "Given the particular circumstances of this accused person, in particular her youth, the challenges of her indebtedness to her employment agent and her fear of being repatriated in these circumstances, we think a reasonable person situated as the accused person was could reasonably have been similarly provoked," he said. Parties will return to court at a later date to make submissions on the sentence. Culpable homicide is punishable with life imprisonment, or up to 20 years in prison with a fine. As Zin Mar Nwe is a woman, she cannot be caned. The maid, who is from Myanmar, stabbed the victim in June 2018 after the elderly woman threatened to send her back to her agent. The victim was watching television when Zin Mar Nwe knifed her 26 times until she stopped moving. The maid then retrieved her belongings, washed the knife and changed before fleeing. She was arrested at her employment agency. There is a gag order on the identities of the victim, her family members and the location of the incident. FINDINGS ON MAID ABUSE Grave and sudden provocation is one of the exceptions under which culpable homicide is not murder. Establishing this defence involves consideration of whether a person sharing similar characteristics with and in the same situation as the offender would be deprived of self-control by the provocation. To this end, the Court of Appeal considered the trial judge's findings on whether Zin Mar Nwe was abused by the victim prior to the killing. Chief Justice Menon said these findings went directly towards the defence of grave and sudden provocation. The trial judge, Justice Andre Maniam, had accepted that the victim hit the maid to get her attention or reprimand her, and that the victim also retaliated when the maid accidentally hurt her on certain occasions. In his judgment, he had said: "I do not believe that the accused would have stabbed the deceased if there were just an isolated statement by the deceased, on the day in question, that the accused would be sent back to the agent. "Rather, that statement was made after a period in which the deceased had scolded, hit, and hurt the accused. He had continued: "But for the threat to send the accused back to the agent, however, the accused would not have stabbed the deceased." Justice Maniam had also accepted that the maid did not report the victim's treatment of her to the rest of the family, and it seemed she was "willing to tolerate such treatment, although she was hurt, sad, and felt unappreciated". "The accused however feared being sent back to the agent (and consequently back to her home country in debt), and when the deceased threatened to do so, that triggered the stabbing." He had further noted that Zin Mar Nwe had told the police she was "very angry" when the victim said those words to her. PARTIES' ARGUMENTS Zin Mar Nwe's appeal was fought by lawyers Josephus Tan and Cory Wong Guo Yean of Invictus Law, who represented her under the Criminal Legal Aid Scheme. Mr Tan argued that the "ingredients" of grave and sudden provocation were already present in the trial and should have been considered by the trial judge. These included the evidence that the maid gave about being abused, her mounting debt with her employment agency and the threat of being sent back to her agency. He also pointed to her young age and the fact that she had already been rejected by two employers since arriving in Singapore in January 2018, which were part of her characteristics and situation at the time. The provocation posed by the victim's threat to send Zin Mar Nwe back to her agency the next day took place against this backdrop, the maid's lawyers argued. It "struck directly at the heart of her dire employment predicament in Singapore", they said in written submissions. "And at the tender age of 17, we suggest that (Zin Mar Nwe) would reasonably not have the appropriate coping mechanisms to deal with or to attenuate the gravity of the provocation," they added. Deputy Public Prosecutors Kumaresan Gohulabalan, Sean Teh and Brian Tan argued that a defence of grave and sudden provocation was not supported by the evidence. Mr Kumaresan argued that the trial judge was wrong to find that the victim had verbally or physically abused Zin Mar Nwe as this was based solely on evidence given by the maid, who was not a credible witness. He pointed out that she never reported the abuse to the rest of the family despite them having a good relationship with her, and did not write about it in her diary even though she candidly recorded her feelings there. The prosecutors also pointed to "radically inconsistent" versions of events that the maid gave, such as an account she gave of two "dark-skinned" men killing the victim before she admitted to the stabbing. However, the Court of Appeal found that Justice Maniam's findings were supported by the weight of evidence, and clearly established the subjective element of the gravity of the provocation. He said the court did not read those findings as extending to acts of alleged abuse that occurred before the day of the killing itself. Chief Justice Menon also noted the "heinous" nature of the knife attack and the absence of a motive for the killing. During the appeal, the prosecution had also acknowledged the trial judge's "troubles" in establishing motive. Addressing the maid's credibility, Chief Justice Menon acknowledged that Zin Mar Nwe initially came up with a false account of how the victim was killed. However, four days after the killing, she gave a "nuanced" account of what had happened – an altercation with the victim and a threat of being sent back to her agent – and the effect this had on her. He said it was "implausible" that she made this up to defend herself when it was not being advanced in her defence until now, and that her account was essentially consistent throughout her trial.
Fox News
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
North Korea launches short-range ballistic missiles into sea, South Korea says
North Korea launched several short-range ballistic missiles into its eastern sea Thursday in what South Korea is calling a "clear act of provocation." Lee Sung Joon, a spokesperson for South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the launches were possibly intended to test the performance of weapons that North Korea plans to export as it continues to send military equipment and troops to fuel Russia's warfighting against Ukraine. The agency said multiple missiles were launched from an area around North Korea's eastern port city of Wonsan from about 8:10 to 9:20 a.m. local time Thursday, with the farthest traveling about 497 miles. Lee said the tests likely involved a short-range ballistic missile system launched from vehicles — possibly modeled after Russia's Iskander missile -- and also large-caliber rocket artillery systems. The Joint Chiefs said South Korean and U.S. intelligence authorities detected the launch preparations in advance and tracked the missiles after they were launched. It issued a statement denouncing the launches as a "clear act of provocation" that threatens peace and stability in the region, according to the Associated Press. South Korean military officials are now analyzing whether the tests were linked to the North's weapons exports to Russia. In early March, North Korea fired several ballistic missiles into the sea just hours after South Korea and the United States kicked off their first major joint military exercise of President Donald Trump's second term. "We are aware of the DPRK's multiple ballistic missile launches and are consulting closely with the Republic of Korea and Japan, as well as other regional allies and partners. The United States condemns these actions and calls on the DPRK to refrain from further unlawful and destabilizing acts," the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement at the time. Those launches come after South Korean and U.S. forces began their annual Freedom Shield exercise. After denying its war involvement for months, North Korea last month confirmed for the first time that it had sent combat troops to help Russia in recapturing parts of the Kursk region, which had fallen to a surprise Ukrainian incursion last year. Moscow also acknowledged the North Korean involvement, with Russian President Vladimir Putin issuing a statement thanking the North for sending troops to support his forces and promising not to forget their sacrifices. Recent South Korean intelligence assessments suggest that North Korea has sent about 15,000 soldiers to Russia, and that nearly 5,000 of them have been killed or injured while fighting against Ukrainian forces, the AP reported. Washington and Seoul have also accused North Korea of supplying Russia with various types of military equipment, including artillery systems and shells and ballistic missiles.
