Medico-Legal Seminar on Automatism
To be held on June 14th 2013 at Keele University
This seminar is aimed at both lawyers and doctors or other expert
witnesses. There will be a number of eminent speakers from both the
legal and medical/scientific field to provide an interdisciplinary
perspective on the defence of automatism and the provision of medical
evidence to support or refute this defence. In addition, Professor David
Ormerod, Criminal Law Commissioner, will be speaking about the
consultation by the Law Commission on reform of the law on insanity
and automatism, followed by a discussion.
The aim of the seminar is to educate doctors and lawyers about the
medico-legal issues of automatism, encourage inter-professional
dialogue and generate a discussion about the issues and possible
reforms.
The program is as follows:
10.30-10.55 Registration and tea, coffee and biscuits
10.55-11.00 Conference opening address by Professor Martin Wasik
(Keele)
11.00-11.30 Professor RD Mackay (Law School, De Montfort University,
Leicester) speaking on ‘The current law on automatism’
 The case law, guiding principles of the law on automatism, and the
distinction between insane and non-insane automatism.
11.30-12.00 Dr Irshaad Ebrahim (London Sleep Centre) on ‘The
medico-legal approach to automatism’
 How I evaluate the defendant who claims to have been in a state
of automatism.
12.00-12.30 Dr Lisa Claydon (UWE School of Law) on ‘Neuroscience
and the law’
 How neuroscience can help in the assessment of criminal
responsibility
12.30-13.10 Questions
13.10-14.00 Lunch
14.00-14.30 Professor Jim Horne (Sleep Research Centre,
Loughborough University) on ‘Sleep-related crashes’
 The issues of driver fault in sleep-related crashes and how to
assess possibly sleep-related incidents.
14.30-1500 Dr Chris Idzikowski (Sleep expert, Edinburgh Sleep Centre)
on 'Evaluating those involved in putative sleep-related incidents’.
15.00-15.30 Professor Vincent Marks (Expert witness on
hypoglycaemia) on ‘Hypoglycaemia and automatism’
 The evaluation of hypoglycaemia-related crime, especially driving
offences, with particular reference to the issue of prior fault.
15.30-16.10 Questions
16.10-16.25 Tea, coffee and biscuits
16.25- 16.55 Professor David Ormerod (Criminal Law Commissioner) on
‘The Reform of the Law on Automatism and Insanity’
 A report on the progress of the consultation
16.55-17.40 Discussion of the consultation and reforms
Speakers:

Professor Ronnie Mackay has a long and distinguished record of research in
criminal law and mental health law, with particular emphasis on mental
condition defences and mentally abnormal offenders. He is on the editorial
board of the Journal of Forensic Psychiatry and Psychology and Personality
and Mental Health - Multidisciplinary Studies from Personality Dysfunction
and Criminal Behaviour. He has a significant record of publications in the
leading academic journals in his fields and has acted as an academic
consultant to the Law Commission in relation to their work on: Partial
Defences to Murder; and Murder, Manslaughter and Infanticide. He has
recently been engaged in an empirical study for the Law Commission into
both unfitness to plead and the defence of insanity as part of the
Commission's 10th Reform Programme. This empirical work is the culmination
of a longstanding research project, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, which
has also included consideration of both 'diminished responsibility' and the plea
of 'provocation'. Professor Mackay is regularly invited to give papers at
national and international conferences and consulted by a range of
stakeholders. Professor Mackay is part of the editorial team which recently
produced a major work entitled Principles of Mental Health Law and Policy
(Oxford University Press).

Dr Irshaad Ebrahim is the medical director of the London & Edinburgh Sleep
Centres, he co-founded with Dr Peter Fenwick the first Forensic Sleep
Medicine assessment unit at Broadmoor Hospital. This unit has subsequently
moved to The Edinburgh Sleep Centre. He has authored various peerreviewed journal articles and book chapters on Forensic aspects of Sleep
Disorders. His clinical practice focuses on the full range of Sleep Disorders
and the inter-face between Neuropsychiatry and Sleep Medicine.

Dr Lisa Claydon is a University Learning and Teaching Fellow, and an
Associate Professor in Criminal Responsibility, at the University of the West of
England. She is particularly interested in research led learning and teaches
Criminal Law. Her particular area of expertise is in researching criminal law,
especially mental condition defences. Her research publications have largely
focussed on the intersection between neuroscience and law, with a particular
focus on what neuroscience may tell us about criminal responsibility. She is
also interested in the wider issues that arise from neuroscientific research for
example whether neuroscience may inform our notions of the age of criminal
responsibility, what it means to have capacity as a legal actor. Neuroscience
will inform our view of the human condition and how this should be fed into
evidence given in the courtroom is also a matter of specific interest.

Professor Jim Horne is Emeritus Professor of Psychophysiology and Director
of the Sleep Research Centre at Loughborough University. He has a long and
distinguished career in sleep science, and was described to me as a ‘legend’
by Carlos Schenck. He is a fellow of the Institute of Biology and the British
Psychological Society, a founder member of the British Sleep Society, and is
Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Sleep Research. He is frequently called upon
to discuss topics related to sleep on radio and television, and writes regularly
for broadsheets and for scientific magazines. He also written popular scientific
books including Why We Sleep and Sleepfaring.

Dr Chris Idzikowski's formal interest in sleep began in Edinburgh where he
earned his PhD working with the late Emeritus Professor Ian Oswald, the UK's
founding father of sleep research .After Edinburgh University he went to study
anxiety and fear in Cambridge (Medical Research Council) before setting up
and running the Janssen Research Foundation's clinical pharmacology sleep
laboratory in Oxford. From there he left to become Deputy Head of the Human
Psychopharmacology Research Unit at the Robens Institute of Health and
Safety, Surrey before setting up the Sleep Assessment and Advisory Service.
Now mainly in Edinburgh his role at the centre is non-executive allowing him
to concentrate on his forensic, clinical and research interests. He has also sat
on the boards of the Sleep Medicine Research Foundation, the European
Sleep Research Society and the U.S Sleep Research Society. He was
founding Chairman of the Royal Society of Medicine Forum on sleep and its
disorders and guided its transition to become the Sleep Medicine Section (he
is currently President-Elect).

Professor Vincent Marks studied medicine at Oxford and St Thomas’s. In
1970 he became the first Professor of Clinical Biochemistry at the newly
established University of Surrey in Guildford. He set up one of the first Clinical
Investigation units in the country at nearby St Luke’s Hospital, where he was
consultant Chemical pathologist, and this enabled him to continue to
investigate abnormalities of glucose metabolism in patients in line with his
research at the University. In 1965 (second edition 1981) he wrote jointly with
the neurologist F Clifford Rose a seminal monograph on Hypoglycaemia. He
went on to author more than 100 papers on the subject. Currently Vincent
Marks is engaged in writing a monograph on the Forensic aspects of
Hypoglycaemia a subject in which he has been interested for some 30 years.

Professor David Ormerod is Law Commissioner for England and Wales
responsible for Criminal law, Evidence and Procedure. He is a Barrister and
Bencher of Middle Temple and was, until appointment at the Commission,
Professor of Criminal Justice at Queen Mary University of London. He is the
author of numerous articles and books including Smith and Hogan’s Criminal
Law, Smith’s Law of Theft and Fraud: Criminal Law and Practice. He is the
Editor in Chief of Blackstone’s Criminal Practice and Halsbury’s Law of
England (on Criminal Evidence and Procedure). He is the Editor of the
Criminal Law Review. He lectures regularly for the Judicial College and the
Criminal Bar Association.
To register, please contact: Tracey Wood at t.wood@keele.ac.uk
There is a nominal fee to cover the costs of hosting the conference – this
is £20 for students and £40 for everyone else (except for Keele/UHNS
staff for which there is no charge).
CPD points are being applied for (both medical and legal).