What the subjects cover
FLK2 Session 2 examines Criminal Liability and Criminal Law and Practice alongside Property Practice and Solicitors Accounts. Treat them as one body of material with two halves: whether the defendant is guilty, and what happens to the case procedurally.
General principles
Actus reus and mens rea, including intention and recklessness and where each is required; causation in fact and in law and the events that break the chain; omissions and when a duty to act arises; strict liability; and the routes to liability beyond the principal offender — accessories, and the inchoate offences of attempt, conspiracy and encouraging or assisting.
The offences and defences
- Against the person: assault and battery, the statutory assaults causing harm, and homicide — murder, and the partial defences reducing it to manslaughter, alongside unlawful act and gross negligence manslaughter.
- Against property: theft and its five elements, robbery, burglary, fraud, criminal damage and the aggravated form.
- Defences: self-defence and the reasonableness of the force used, duress and its limits, intoxication and the distinction between offences of basic and specific intent, insanity and automatism, and consent where the law permits it.
Questions here rarely test the definition alone. They give you facts sitting on the boundary of an element — the appropriation, the intention, the harm — and ask what offence is made out.
The police station
Detail-heavy, rule-governed, and therefore examined frequently:
- Arrest and the grounds for it, and the detention clock with its reviews and extensions.
- The right to free legal advice, the right to have someone informed, and when either can be delayed.
- Interviews: the caution, the adverse inferences that can follow silence, what makes a confession inadmissible, and the safeguards for vulnerable suspects and the role of the appropriate adult.
- Identification procedures and when one must be held.
- Charge and the alternatives to it, including cautions.
- The solicitor’s own duties: confidentiality, conflicts where two suspects want the same representation, and the limits on advising a client who has admitted guilt.
Bail and first hearings
The presumption in favour of bail and the grounds for refusing it, the conditions that can be imposed and why, the procedure for further applications and appeals, and the consequences of failing to surrender.
Then the first hearing: plea before venue and allocation for either-way offences, sending to the Crown Court, and the credit available for an early guilty plea — which matters both procedurally and at sentence.
Evidence and trial
The burden and standard of proof, the admissibility rules that generate the most questions — confessions and the grounds for excluding them, bad character and the gateways, hearsay and its exceptions, and the general discretion to exclude unfair evidence — and the course of a trial in each court, including submissions of no case to answer and the treatment of visual identification evidence.
Sentencing and appeals
The purposes of sentencing, the approach to seriousness with aggravating and mitigating factors, the main sentences available in each court, the sentencing powers of the magistrates, credit for a guilty plea, and ancillary orders. Then the appeal routes from each court, and who may appeal what.
Where the marks go
- Procedure over substance. Candidates over-revise offences and under-revise the timetable. The detention clock, allocation and bail are asked constantly.
- Which court, which power. Options offering the right order made by the wrong court.
- Admissibility routes. Bad character gateways and hearsay exceptions are distinguishable, and the exam distinguishes them.
- Ethics at the police station. Conflicts and confidentiality questions dressed as procedure — the pervasive ethics examined in Legal Services appear here too.
The rest of the session is in the FLK2 subject guide.