An example of a story that examiners wrangle in order to test principles of criminal law. Stunning in their complexity and ridiculousness.
When she was younger, Emma was overweight and she was bullied about this at school. Since then, she has lost a great deal of weight and now suffers from anorexia. Emma is very self-conscious about her body and believes that she is overweight even though she is extremely thin. She limits her intake of food to 300 calories a day and this causes her to suffer bad headaches which make her very short-tempered. A new colleague, Helen, is allocated the desk next to Emma at work and Emma realises with horror that Helen was an old school mate who used to bully her when she was at school for being overweight. Helen’s first comment to Emma was ‘wow fatty, you’ve changed’ and Emma was embarrassing when several of her colleagues laughed, assuming that this meant that they all thought that she was overweight. Emma stayed up all night exercising and vowed to eat no food at all until she had lost another seven pounds. By lunchtime the next day, Emma is feeling very light-headed and cannot concentrate on her work. Helen sees that Emma is not doing any work and says ‘you ought to lose some weight, fatty, then perhaps you wouldn’t be so lazy’. Emma snaps and smashes her industrial size stapler into Helen’s face. Helen collapses to the floor and remains unconscious until the ambulance arrives. The blow to her head triggers an undiagnosed aneurism and Helen dies in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.
