Criminal Code (R.S.C., 1985, c. C-46)

Marginal note:Murder reduced to manslaughter

• 232 (1) Culpable homicide that otherwise would be murder may be reduced to manslaughter if the person who committed it did so in the heat of passion caused by sudden provocation.

• Marginal note:What is provocation

  (2) Conduct of the victim that would constitute an indictable offence under this Act that is punishable by five or more years of imprisonment and that is of such a nature as to be sufficient to deprive an ordinary person of the power of self-control is provocation for the purposes of this section, if the accused acted on it on the sudden and before there was time for their passion to cool.

• Marginal note:Questions of fact

  (3) For the purposes of this section, the questions

  • (a) whether the conduct of the victim amounted to provocation under subsection (2), and

  • (b) whether the accused was deprived of the power of self-control by the provocation that he alleges he received,

  are questions of fact, but no one shall be deemed to have given provocation to another by doing anything that he had a legal right to do, or by doing anything that the accused incited him to do in order to provide the accused with an excuse for causing death or bodily harm to any human being.

• Marginal note:Death during illegal arrest

  (4) Culpable homicide that otherwise would be murder is not necessarily manslaughter by reason only that it was committed by a person who was being arrested illegally, but the fact that the illegality of the arrest was known to the accused may be evidence of provocation for the purpose of this section.