death was caused during the commission of another felony (such as robbery or burglary). Section 1 of the Act abolished constructive malice except where the intention implicit in the other crime was an intention to kill or to do grievous bodily harm. Thus, the automatic linkage between the other crime and the murder was broken, and juries were then required to consider more directly whether the accused was culpable when engaging in the conduct resulting in death. But this made the Act unclear in its effect. Although the marginal note to the section purports to abolish the doctrine of "constructive malice", it did not abolish the concept of felony, the rules relating to the arrest of felons or the general rules specifying the test for the mental element which the juries were to apply. Hence, the Act did not abolish the principles of expressed malice or implied malice, i.e. malice could be implied by the words and expressions used by the accused, or there was a set of circumstances from which malice could be implied. These were objective tests that enabled the court to impute or "construct" the malice. This continuing common law was the basis of the decision in DPP v Smith where the Lords confirmed that neither expressed nor implied malice had been repealed by the section. It was not until the Criminal Law Act 1967 abolished the distinction between felonies and misdemeanours that the old common law rules on malice for the proof of mens rea in felonies could no longer apply. Voluntary manslaughter defences The Act created two partial defences—diminished responsibility and suicide pact—to murder which, if satisfied, reduce a charge of murder to a charge of manslaughter. It also changed the law of another partial defence to murder provocation. Diminished responsibility In 1953 the Report of the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment took the view that mental abnormality which resulted in a diminished responsibility, was relatively common and potentially of importance to a wide range of offences. The Commission therefore asserted that a "radical" amendment to the existing law would not be justified for the "limited" purpose of enabling the courts to avoid imposing the death sentence. Parliament was not impressed and section 2 of the Act now provides that diminished responsibility is available as a defence where the accused was, at the time of the offence, suffering from an "abnormality of the mind" which