Quote: zooo @ August 25 2012, 12:11 AM BST
Doesn't mean he should get anything but life imprisonment. And frankly, manslaughter should be things like driving badly and accidentally hitting someone. Not knifing your entire family to death because something bad happened to you.
It's a legal thing. Besides accidentally running someone over isn't manslaughter, in fact in the UK, there's no such crime as Vehicular Homicide, just causing death by dangerous driving.
But here is a good example - thug heads out on the streets with a knife in his pocket, gets into an altercation at the Asda cigarette kiosk with a stranger, pulls his knife and kills someone. He didn't know the victim beforehand and the motive for the killing was unclear / unpre-meditated. In the words of Alan Partridge, that is classic manslaughter.
As for the diminished responsibility - he hacked his family to death in broad daylight - hardly the actions of a cold blooded assassin seeking to conceal his crimes. So yep, manslaughter with diminished responsibility.