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Offences against the person

Hey, I am practicing a couple of problem questions about offences against the person and have some questions about content/ structure

1) can assault, battery, ABH, GBH occur towards animals (ignoring animal cruelty and stuff)? Like if for example, all the ABH AR and MR requirements are fulfilled, would it still be classed as ABH if it’s done to animal? The reason I am confused is the Act is about offences against the person so would that mean technically those offences can’t be done towards animals or can they?

2) let’s say i have a question where I know it is battery and not assault, should I still go through the AR and MR of assault and conclude that it isn’t assault or just ignore assault and go through the offence of battery?

3) if I would still go through the elements of assault, and I find that the AR element fail, should I just end the paragraph there saying there is no assault or still go through the MR element even though I know it won’t be assault? Or would that just be a waste of words?

4) finally, if the question says discuss the liability of D, should I just say what offence they are liable for or include the possible sentence they would get as well?

Sorry for all the questions and thank you in advance!
1) These types of offences are specific to human beings; and you will find the language in the statutes consistent with such. For example, murder contains that it must be of a ‘reasonable creature in being’ i.e. a human being.

2) You only address the issues that are in the scenario. If the offence is a battery, discuss battery - you don’t need to discuss what’s not present.

3) Again see above point about relevancy. Only discuss what is relevant to that scenario.

4) Discuss the possible offences they are likely to have committed; that means, run through AR and MR of each offence and discuss whether they are satisfied and if so, the offence has been committed. Note, there must be no defence also. If you aren’t word restricted then you could say, for example, it is likely that X will be liable for murder and this offence carries a minimum of xyz etc…

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