Attorney General for Jersey v. Holley

Holley (defendant) and his partner Cherylinn Mullane were both alcoholics who often fought violently while drunk. After a day of heavy drinking, Mullane told Holley she had slept with another man; Holley then struck her seven or eight times with an axe, killing her. At his second trial for murder, Holley argued he was provoked into manslaughter; experts testified his alcoholism made his drinking involuntary and that his personality made him unusually susceptible to provocation, but the trial judge did not let the jury consider that evidence when assessing whether a reasonable person would have reacted as Holley did. The jury convicted him of murder; the Court of Appeal set the conviction aside and entered a verdict of manslaughter.