Parties

Question 1

Who is a principle offender?

Answer 1

D completes the AR+MR of the principle offence

Question 2

What is a co-principle?

Answer 2

D + another complete A+R & MR of an offence

Question 3

Who is an accomplice

Answer 3

D is an accomplice if she aids, abets, procures p to commit the offence

Question 4

Giannetto [1997] 1 Cr App R 1

Answer 4

D threatened to kill his wife (V) and hired another party (Y) to kill her. V was killed, but it could not be proved who killed her. D was charged with murder on the basis that he either killed V himself as a principal or she was killed by someone on his behalf (ie he was an accomplice).

Crown Court: guilty of murder.

Court of Appeal: conviction upheld on appeal. D may be liable in these circumstances even where the jury are not unanimous on what role he played, as long as they were sure that he was either a principal or an accessory.

Question 5

How will D be liable if she is found as an accomplice?

Answer 5

Punished as if she committed the crime herself

Question 5

What is the ulterior mens rea for abetting, aiding, counselling or procuring?

Answer 5

D must intend that P will complete the conduct element of the principal offence

D must intend or know the circumstance element of P’s principal offence

D must intend that P will cause the results (if any) required by the principal offence, unless the principal offence is one of constructive liability

D must intend that P will act with the mens rea required by the principal offence

Question 5

What is aiding?

Answer 5

‘Aiding’ should be read as ‘assisting’. D may assist at the time P commits the principal offence (eg acting as a lookout, driving the getaway car, etc), or in advance of the offence (eg providing tools, weapons, etc).39 D may satisfy this requirement even where the assistance is unwanted, or even unknown, to P.

Question 5

Abetting

Answer 5

‘Abetting’ should be read as ‘encouraging’. As with inchoate assisting or encouraging,41 D can encourage positively by instigating or emboldening P (even as one of a number supporting P42) or negatively by threatening.

Question 5

Clarkson

Answer 5

D1 and D2 entered a room in their barracks in which a woman was being raped by other soldiers. There was no evidence that they provided any assistance or encouragement beyond their choice to enter and remain present. They were charged with rape as accomplices.

Court-Martial: guilty of rape.

Court-Martial Appeal Court: appeal allowed. Voluntary presence is capable of satisfying the actus reus of complicity. However, there was insufficient proof as to mens rea: the prosecution did not prove that D1 and D2 intended to assist or encourage rape by their presence.

Question 5

Can omission = assisting, abetting or procuring?

Answer 5

Du Cros v Lambourne
D was charged with driving a motor vehicle at a dangerous speed. However, it could not be proved whether he was driving or was a passenger.

Petty Sessions: guilty of driving at a dangerous speed. Conviction in the alternative that he was either driving, or was (as owner of the car) assenting to P’s speeding by failing to intervene.

Quarter Sessions: conviction upheld on appeal.

King’s Bench: appeal dismissed.

Question 5

What if P does the act without being informed?

Answer 5

D will be liable for the full offence

Question 6

Bryce

Answer 6

D drove P to a place to enable P to kill V. D foresaw that P would kill V. P did kill V, but a full 12 hours after D’s involvement, and only following discussion with another party. D was charged with murder as P’s accomplice.

Crown Court: guilty of murder.

Court of Appeal: conviction upheld on appeal. Despite the time delay between D’s acts and the killing, and despite other contributory facts, D’s acts continued to provide some assistance to the murder.

Question 7

How is abetting proven?

Answer 7

it must be proved that D’s encouragement was communicated to P.Once it is demonstrated that P was aware of D’s encouragement, there is no requirement to prove that any encouragement by D had a positive effect on P’s conduct. Even if D’s encouragement was ignored by P, D will be liable provided the counselled offence was committed by P.

Question 8

What is procuring?

Answer 8

To procure is to ‘produce by endeavour’. does involve causation.

Question 9

Tuck v Robson

Answer 9

A (a pub landlord) aided and abetted when he permitted customers to continue drinking alcohol after the licensing hours. However, in Clarkson [1971], A’s mere presence at the scene of a crime, where there was no duty to prevent the crime, was not aiding. There has to be evidence of assistance or encouragement (and an intention that A’s act would assist or encourage).

Question 10

Attorney-General’s Reference (No 1 of 1975)

Answer 10

A secretly laced P’s drinks, knowing P would shortly be driving home. This was procuring P’s offence of drink driving. There was a causal connection between A’s acts and the principal crime, and A foresaw the principal crime. Lord Widgery CJ held: ‘You procure a thing by setting out to see that it happens and taking the appropriate steps to produce that happening.’

Question 11

MR for assisting or abetting

Answer 11

it must be shown that A intended to assist P to commit the offence, with P having the mens rea required for that offence.

Question 12

What if P does something that D did not expect to happen?

Answer 12

A will not be liable if P does something completely different to that which A intended to assist (Tas [2018]).

Question 13

125Grant

Answer 13

Grant and four others were driving around looking for two men they wished to cause serious harm to. The plan was to try and run them over. They succeeded in their plan but then two of the group got out of the car and hit the victims with a metal bar, killing one. Grant claimed these acts had not been intended or foreseen by him. However, the Court of Appeal held he was liable as an accomplice because he had intended to assist in a killing and his conduct had not been ‘so distanced in time, place or circumstances from the conduct of (the perpetrator) that it would not be realistic to regard (his or her) offence as encouraged or assisted by it’.

Question 14

Cogan and Leak

Answer 14

D told his wife (V) to have sexual intercourse with his friend (P). V was scared of D and so, although she did not consent, she did not resist P. P was unaware that V was not consenting. P was charged with rape, with D as his accomplice.

Crown Court: guilty of rape (both D and P).

Court of Appeal: P’s appeal allowed—there was a misdirection relating to the mens rea required of P for rape.72 D’s conviction upheld—although P was innocent, D nevertheless procured the offence of rape.

Question 15

MR for assisting, abetting, procuring

Answer 15

D must intend to do acts of assist or encouragement (or to procure);

(ii)
D must intend that P will commit the offence with the relevant mens rea;

(iii)
D must also know the other essential elements of the offence.

Question 16

What is MR of D’s own conduct

Answer 16

1. D’s conduct is voluntary
2. D must intend that her conduct will assist or encourage P to commit the principal offence; or in the context of procuring, that her conduct will cause the principal offence.

Question 17

National Coal Board v Gamble

Answer 17

D supplied coal to P. At the weigh-station, before P was able to leave with the coal, D found that P’s lorry was overladen to the extent that taking the lorry on the road became an offence.81 Nevertheless D allowed P to leave with the overladen lorry. D was charged as an accomplice to P’s offence.

Question 18

DPP for NI v Maxwell

Answer 18

D was a member of the proscribed organisation UVF in Northern Ireland and he assisted P by driving him to a pub. D knew that P intended to attack the pub, but was unsure whether this would involve planting explosives, murder, or robbery. In the event, P damaged the pub using pipe bombs. D was charged as an accessory to the explosives offence.102

Question 19

Thornton v Mitchell

Answer 19

A bus conductor (D) negligently signalled for a bus driver (P) to reverse. Two pedestrians were knocked down by the bus, one of whom (V) was killed. P was charged with careless driving, D as an accomplice.124

Court: P not guilty, as his driving was not careless. D was found guilty, and appealed.

Divisional Court: appeal by case stated allowed. Where P does not commit the actus reus of an offence, there can be no accomplice liability.

Question 20

What if P has a defence. Is D still lliabe?

Answer 20

Bourne

Question 21

Bourne

Answer 21

D compelled his wife (P) to have sex with a dog. D was charged as an accomplice to P’s offence of buggery. P was not charged because she would have had a defence of duress.

Court of Assizes: guilty of buggery.

Court of Criminal Appeal: conviction upheld on appeal. The fact that P had a defence, and so was not liable for the principal offence, does not undermine D’s liability as an accomplice.

Question 22

Is D liable even where he does not see P committing a more serious offence?

Answer 22

D’s foresight or lack of foresight about the details of P’s offence will not affect her liability as long as she intends the essential elements. For example, if D provides P with a gun to murder V on Tuesday, but P kills V on Wednesday, D remains liable for murder as P’s accomplice.

Question 23

English = overwhelming supervening event

Answer 23

D and P attacked a police sergeant, V, with wooden posts. P produced a knife which D had not foreseen that P might carry and fatally stabbed V. D was charged with murder as an accomplice.

Crown Court: guilty of murder.

Court of Appeal: conviction upheld on appeal.

House of Lords: appeal allowed. Even though D was reckless as to P causing GBH with intent (ie sufficient mens rea for complicity in murder under the law at the time), P’s conduct (stabbing with a knife) was fundamentally different from that anticipated by D (hitting with posts). Thus, D is not an accomplice to P’s offence.

Question 24

Saunders and Archer

Answer 24

P planned to kill his wife, X. D advised P, and on this advice P gave X a poisoned apple. X ate some of the apple, but gave the rest to their child, V, who ate it and died. P saw what happened and did not intervene.

Court: P is guilty of murder, his intention to kill X being moved to V via the doctrine of transferred malice.155 X is an innocent agent. D is also not guilty of murder as an accomplice.

Question 25

Which statute gave rise to the concept of accessory?

Answer 25

Accessories and Abettors Act 1861

Question 26

What is joint enterprise?

Answer 26

a coordination of behaviour between D and P towards a common criminal end. where D and P engaged together with a common purpose to commit Crime A and in the course of that P committed Crime B, then D would also be liable for Crime B if D had foreseen as a possibility that P might commit it with mens rea, and the manner in which P did so was not fundamentally different from what D had foreseen might happen.

Question 27

Can D withdraw participation of the PO

Answer 27

Where D assists or encourages P to commit a principal offence (with mens rea) she is immediately liable for an inchoate offence regardless of P’s future conduct.186 D cannot negate such inchoate liability even if she later ‘withdraws’ by removing or renouncing her assistance or encouragement. if D successfully withdraws in the time between her conduct and P committing the principal offence, D will be able to limit her liability to the inchoate charge and avoid complicity liability.

Question 28

What is the Tyrell defence?

Answer 28

Where an offence is designed for the protection of a specific class of victim,194 someone within that class is not complicit where they assist, encourage, or procure the offence to be committed against themselves

Question 29

Rook

Answer 29

D and another were recruited by X to kill his wife (V). D further recruited P. On the day of the murder, D was unexpectedly absent but P went ahead with the plan and murdered V. D was charged with murder as P’s accomplice.

Crown Court: guilty of murder.

Court of Appeal: conviction upheld on appeal. D’s absence was not sufficient to withdraw from P’s offence.

Question 30

Tyrell

Answer 30

D (a girl at some point when aged between 13–16 years) encouraged P to have sexual intercourse with her. D was charged under section 5 of the Criminal Amendment Act 1885 (now the Sexual Offences Act 2003, s9) as P’s accessory.

Central Criminal Court: guilty of the sexual offence.

Court for Crown Cases Reserved: appeal allowed. The statute was passed for the protection of young girls, not to criminalise them.