Student no: 60757914
CRW2601
Assignment 01
Unique no: 812336
Due date: 18 August 2020
i.
ii.
Yes, X committed an act that could give rise to liability. An act in the legal sense
of the word mean a voluntary human act. A human being can, however, be
punished if he commits a crime through the agency of an animal, for example
where a human being (X) command or urges his dog to bite someone.
X cannot rely on private defence because from the objective point of view, he
did not find himself in danger. He merely thought he was in danger. We refer to
this type of situation as putative private defence. Putative defence means
private defence that existed only in X’s thoughts. It is not actually private
defence. The fact that X cannot rely on private defence do not mean that he is
guilty of murder, he may as a defence rely on absence of culpability because
he was mistaken, and his mistake excluded the intention to murder or shot the
burglars not a police officer.