R v Rabey [1981] 54 CCC (2d) 1

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FACTS

The Ontario Court of Appeal set aside the appellant R.'s acquittal for causing bodily harm with intent to wound (Criminal Code, s. 228).

R., a university student, struck a girlfriend with a rock he had taken from a geology laboratory and then, while kneeling on the floor, began choking her.

The previous day he had found a letter in her notebook in which she stated that she considered other males more exciting and desirable than R., to whom she referred somewhat obliquely as "a nothing".

The defence of non-insane automatism was advanced, i.e., that at the relevant time R. was in a state in which, though capable of action, he was not conscious of what he was doing, and that he was not suffering from a disease of the mind and was therefore not insane.

Acquitted on sane autmoatism intially, taken to COA, error or

MEDICAL EVIDENCE

No neuorological disease or psychosis

Discrpencies between medial experts

Dissasociative state but not necessarily DOM --> rejection from the girl was a psych blow, very unusual reaction

Prosecution expert: extreme state of rage, if it was a dissociative state it would have been disease of the mind

Reoccurance unlikely