COMPLICITY Flashcards
Johnson v Youden [1950] 1 KB 544
A mistake of law is no defence, even in the context of accomplice liability.
This case involved business associates who were criminally indicted for aiding a builder who wound up selling a home for a higher price than the price controls in effect at the time allowed for it to be sold. The business partners did not realize that the higher price would be a violation of the law. It also turned out that they didn’t realize that the higher price was paid. So in this case, they got off anyway. However, the court’s analysis is interesting – a mistake of law wouldn’t be enough. These guys were only getting off because they didn’t know the higher price was paid. If they hadn’t known the higher price was paid they would have been liable for assisting in a crime even if they didn’t realize that it was a crime to sell the house at that price.
R v Bainbridge [1959] 3 WLR 356
(Aiding)
Aiding has been understood by the courts to be doing something to help. Aiding has also been called a positive act of assistance, which is voluntarily done. The mens rea part is knowledge of the circumstances constituting the effects.
In this case the defendant was indicted for selling some tools to people who were later arrested and charged for burglarizing a bank with those tools. Bainbridge argued that although he knew that these people were planning on using these tools to break into some building and steal some stuff, he didn’t actually know that they were planning on breaking into this particular bank at a particular time and stealing the particular things they stole. He argued that he didn’t really know the circumstances of the crime in sufficient detail even though he knew that they were going to break into something.
The court was not impressed with this argument. If you were aware of the type of crime that is going to be perpetrated you don’t need to know the specifics of the circumstances.
DPP No. Ireland v Maxwell [1978] 3 All ER 1140
(Aiding) Aiding has been understood by the courts to be doing something to help. Aiding has also been called a positive act of assistance, which is voluntarily done. The mens rea part is knowledge of the circumstances constituting the effects.
In this case the defendant acted as a guide to directing members of a violent organization to the site of a bombing attempt. The defendant need not have known the exact nature of the planned attack (that it was a bombing) in order to be guilty of aiding the perpetrators. It is enough that the defendant knew the general type of offence planned, in this case, an attack of some kind against the target to which the defendant led the perpetrators.
R v Clarkson [1971] WLR 1402
(Abetting)
This is a case that involved some soldiers who watched other soldiers commit a rape. They heard some noises and scuffling in an adjoining room and they went and saw what was happening – it turned out that a couple of their colleagues were raping a woman. What they did was just stand there and watch. They didn’t offer any words of encouragement, but they also didn’t leave or stop the crime.
Did they encourage? The court held that they did not.
That presence alone is not encouragement as a matter of law. However, the courts have said that presence can constitute encouragement if there are certain features of a situation that might make it be perceived as encouragement. Another case where this was clarified was
R v J F Alford Transp. Ltd.
R v J F Alford Transp. Ltd. [1997] 2 Cr App 326
(Abetting)
Drivers for a company were making fraudulent claims about the amount of miles they were driving in the books. The question was whether the managers encouraged this behaviour by knowing about it and not saying or doing anything about it, and continuing to process the transactions.
The court held that because the managers were managers, a jury was entitled to decide the question of whether their failure to do anything about this amounted to tacit encouragement. Perhaps the managers wanted to keep the drivers happy by allowing them to pad their hours a little bit?
Calhaem [1985] QB 808 (C)
(Counseling)
This case lays out some criteria for when a person will be considered to be counselling. The defendant hired the perpetrator to kill her romantic rival. The perpetrator wanted to cheat the defendant. He took the money and his plan was to wait inside the victim’s home, and then when she got home he was going to set up and fake a credible effort to have killed her, and then he would keep the money and claim that he had done his best to kill her and had simply failed.
The perpetrator was hiding in the victim’s house waiting to pretend to pounce on her and then report back to the defendant that he had failed in his effort to kill her. Instead, the victim screamed and did something, and the perpetrator panicked and he wound up beating her to death with a wrench.
The question was whether or not the defendant was guilty of having counselled given that she hadn’t counselled entirely effectively. She told the perpetrator to kill the victim, but the man she hired wasn’t actually intending to kill the victim. He wasn’t resolved to kill the victim. But clearly, she was a “but for” cause of the victim’s death because if she hadn’t counselled the perpetrator to kill the victim, the perpetrator would not have been in the victim’s house to set up this false effort in order to keep the defendants money. so, the defendant was the “but for” cause.
This case actually has a lot to do with foreseeability.
The court said that she was guilty because she advised, solicited, or similar, and there was a connection between the counselling and the crime, and the actus reus must be within the scope of authority or advice.
The court is explicit here that this is a legal causation requirement. Basically, this kind of death, the woman being beaten to death with a wrench out of fear by the man who snuck into her home to pretend to kill her, is within the foreseeable scope of outcomes that could have resulted from the defendant’s choice to solicit for this murder.
People v Duffy
(Counseling)
The encouragement of a suicide tipped the victim over the edge. The court said in that case that they didn’t require a “but for” cause, and that we don’t need to show that the person would be alive “but for” the encouragement… All we need to show is that the encouragement was a factor; it wound up being a factor in the decision. Perhaps it was the one thing that tipped someone who was on the cusp of indecision over the edge.
A-G Reference (No 1 of 1975) [1975] 3 WLR 11
(Procuring)
The court considered a case in which the defendant had surreptitiously plied the perpetrator with double measures of alcohol. The perpetrator was found guilty of drink driving (a strict liability crime – even if this guy had no mens rea he still counts as a perpetrator), although the perpetrator was unaware of how much he had consumed.
For accessorial liability, We do require intention and so the court held to procure is “to produce by endeavour.” Surreptitiously serving another person twice the amount of alcohol that they actually think they are drinking is a way of producing by endeavour the offence of drink driving in this other person.
R v Cogan and Leak [1975] 3 WLR 316
(Procuring)
The perpetrator was actually found to be innocent. The person who committed the actus reus was found to be innocent and was not the perpetrator. The defendant, Leak, incorrectly informed his intoxicated friend Cogan that his wife wanted to have sex with Cogan and enjoyed pretending to resist. Logan Performed the actus reus of rape and was acquitted by the jury.
At trial Cogan Said he was unaware of the absence of consent. He did not have the mens rea for rape. The jury believed him and acquitted him of rape. However, Leak was charged as an accessory. He was charged for procuring the rape. The court held that even if the person who performs the actus reus of a crime lacks the mens rea to be liable, a defendant can still be found liable as an accessory for procuring the commission of the actus reus. Basically, the mens rea in this case of the accessory, Leak, was able to be mounted onto the actus reus committed by Cogan to form the complete crime.
Tuck v Robson [1970] 1 WLR 741
(Three kinds of complicity that you can commit by omission)
in this case the pub owner failed to insist that his drinking customers leave following the end of legal business hours. He stopped serving them and said that he was “closed.” He then walked into a different part of the establishment where the boundary with the liquor license was. He let the customers sit there and keep drinking for as long as they wanted. Since it was his pub he had the legal ability to throw them out. He chose not to exercise that legal right. As a result they were in violation of laws against drinking at an establishment outside of licensing hours, and he was considered to be guilty as an accomplice.
Rubie v Faulkner [1940] 1 KB 571
(Three kinds of complicity that you can commit to by omission)
the driving instructor failed to prevent a dangerous maneuver by a pupil. The pupil had ducked into the oncoming lane of traffic right before a bend in the road, which you are not supposed to do. The driving instructor was charged with not hitting the break because he was in a special car that had the break on his side.
R v Bryce [2004] 2 Cr App 592
(Recklessness)
in this case held that a defendant would be guilty as an accomplice if he foresaw the crime as a real or substantial risk or real possibility.
The facts of this case are that the defendant, Bryce, was asked to drive another person to the home of someone that they were all unhappy with for some reason – related to money owed. Bryce said that he didn’t to know why this other person wanted a ride to this house, but that he was privately worried that his passenger wanted to kill the person at the house.
R v S [2005] EWCA Crim 819
(Inchoate Crimes)
This involved a provision of the Suicide Act which makes it a crime to encourage or assist a potential suicide, even if the suicide doesn’t take place. In this case the suicide didn’t take place. You don’t actually have to feel encouraged. It is enough for the inchoate crime of attempt to encourage – attempts to aid, abet, counsel, or procure – that the defendant was attempting to encourage even though there was no encouragement in fact.
Baldessare (1930) 144 LT 185
(Joint-Enterprise Complicity)
The passenger of the reckless joy rider who wound up killing someone recklessly was liable for manslaughter as an accomplice. Obviously the joyrider didn’t intend to aid in a manslaughter, but he did intend to aid in a reckless joyride. So because he was an accomplice in reckless joyriding, this was a foreseeable consequence of his actions leading to manslaughter, which he was liable for.
Chan Wing Siu [1984] 3 All ER 877
(Joint-Enterprise Complicity)
This case involves three robbers perpetrating a robbery, one of them pulls out a knife and stabbed a victim who attempted to defend against the robbery. The question was whether the other defendants could be liable for that murder. The answer was yes, because they knew that he had the knife and actually first saw the stabbing might occur in the course of executing their joint planned robbery.
