[2]: 77 [3] A 1960s-era proposal, the Model Penal Code, invited states to adopt a standard where an element of a crime could be established, even though: In the UK the transferred malice doctrine is not without controversy.
The House of Lords in Attorney General's Reference No 3 of 1994[5] reversed the Court of Appeal decision (reported at (1996) 2 WLR 412), holding that the doctrine of transferred malice could not apply to convict an accused of murder when the defendant had stabbed a pregnant woman in the face, back and abdomen.
Some days after she was released from hospital in an apparently stable condition, she went into labour and gave birth to a premature child, who died four months later.
Lord Mustill criticised the doctrine as having no sound intellectual basis, saying that it was related to the original concept of malice, i.e. that a wrongful act displayed a malevolence which could be attached to any adverse consequence, and this had long been out of date.
In R v Gnango, the Supreme Court controversially held that under the doctrines of joint enterprise and transferred malice D2 is guilty of V's murder if D1 and D2 voluntarily engage in fighting each other, each intending to kill or cause grievous bodily harm to the other and each foreseeing that the other has the reciprocal intention, and if D1 mistakenly kills V in the course of the fight.