[1] In English criminal law, attempted murder is the crime of simultaneously preparing to commit an unlawful killing and having a specific intention to cause the death of a human being under the King's Peace.
[citation needed] However, in R v Morrison [2003] 1 WLR 1859, the Court of Appeal considered the issue of alternative verdicts on an indictment with a single count of attempted murder.
[citation needed] This is a practical decision to ensure that the criminal justice system did not allow a guilty person to walk away because only one charge had been preferred.
But it is not necessarily a good general principle[citation needed] because, in euthanasia for example, a person assisting intends to cause death, but with no suffering.
That attempting to cause grievous bodily harm must be an alternative verdict should the intended victim not die would be a strange outcome because there is no intention to cause any long-lasting and serious injury: the two attempted offences have different mens rea requirements so that proof of intent to murder would not necessarily meet the requirement for section 18 of the 1861 Act.
[citation needed] There must be more than merely preparatory acts and, although the defendant may threaten death, this may not provide convincing evidence of an intention to kill unless the words are accompanied by relevant action, e.g. finding and picking up a weapon and making serious use of it, or making a serious and sustained physical attack without a weapon.
Conversely, the statutory defence of marital coercion is, on the face of the statute, available to a wife charged with attempted murder.