In August 2019, a six-year-old boy was thrown from the tenth-floor of London's Tate Modern gallery. He survived, but with catastrophic, life-changing injuries. Jonty Bravery - the offender, then 17, was later sentenced to imprisonment for life with a minimum term of 15 years. What is particularly interesting isn’t just the facts of the case itself, but the proceedings in court that followed. Despite Bravery having a well-documented autism spectrum disorder and a personality disorder, the defence of diminished responsibility was never raised. That's because, under English law, it couldn't have been.
What happened
Bravery travelled to the Tate Modern, went up to the public viewing platform, and picked a young boy visiting with his family. He picked the child up and threw him over the railing. The boy fell around 100 feet and suffered a bleed to the brain and multiple fractures, leaving him wheelchair-dependent and requiring long-term care.
The sentencing judge, Mrs Justice McGowan, noted that Bravery had researched methods of killing, looked into how autism might affect sentencing, and had asked a member of the public where he could find a tall building. This was important as it showed he had the intent to commit murder. He pleaded guilty in December 2019 to one count of attempted murder and was sentenced in June 2020.
Four medical experts examined him. All agreed he had autism spectrum disorder and a severe personality disorder, and that he posed a grave and ongoing danger to the public. The experts disagreed only on whether he should be detained in a secure hospital under the Mental Health Act or in the prison estate - not on whether he was criminally responsible for what he did.
The key legal point: diminished responsibility only applies to murder
Diminished responsibility, set out in section 2 of the Homicide Act 1957 (as amended by the Coroners and Justice Act 2009), is a partial defence to murder only. Where it succeeds, it reduces a murder charge to manslaughter, avoiding the mandatory life sentence attached to murder and giving the court more sentencing flexibility, including the option of a hospital order.
Crucially, that defence is not applicable to any other offence. It cannot be used against a charge of attempted murder, wounding with intent, or any other crime - no matter how compelling the psychiatric evidence might be.
Because Bravery's victim survived, he was charged with attempted murder rather than murder. That single fact meant diminished responsibility was never a legal option, regardless of how strong the psychiatric evidence of his conditions was. The case therefore illustrates a strict jurisdictional boundary in English criminal law: the outcome for the victim determines not just the charge, but which defences are even available to the defendant.
So how did his mental health factor into the case at all?
With diminished responsibility off the table, Bravery's mental health was relevant only to:
Fitness to plead - whether he understood the proceedings and could participate (he was found fit).
Sentencing - specifically, whether the court should impose a hospital order under the Mental Health Act 1983 or a custodial sentence, and whether he met the legal test for "dangerousness."
The medical experts split on the placement question - Broadmoor Hospital versus prison - but agreed unanimously that he was dangerous and that his conditions did not remove his culpability for the attack. The judge ultimately imposed a discretionary life sentence with a 15-year minimum term, treating his autism and personality disorder as relevant to culpability and rehabilitation prospects, but not as a basis for reducing the offence itself, since no such basis existed in law.
Why this distinction matters
The Bravery case is useful in studying partial defences in English criminal law because it shows the limits of diminished responsibility:
It is not a general "mental impairment" defence available whenever a defendant has a diagnosed condition.
It is not available for attempted offences, even when the underlying intent and mental state are functionally identical to those in a completed murder.
Its scope is fixed by statute to murder alone, leaving other serious violent offences to be dealt with entirely through ordinary sentencing principles, including hospital orders where appropriate, rather than through a change in the offence label.
For defendants like Bravery, whose severe psychiatric conditions were never in dispute, this means that the legal question shifts from culpability to punishment, and the means in which it is adminstred.
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