The then Attorney-General, Sir Hartley Shawcross, said: It has never been the rule in this country I hope it never will be that criminal offences must automatically be the subject of prosecution. He pointed out that the Attorney-General and the Director of Public Prosecutions only intervene to direct a prosecution when they consider it in the public interest to do so and he cited a statement made by Lord Simon in 1925 when he said: there is no greater nonsense talked about the Attorney-Generals duty than the suggestion that in all cases the Attorney-General ought to decide to prosecute merely because he thinks there is what the lawyers call a case. 1. A The offence is established upon proof of the actus reus alone. On 25th February, 1972, Mrs. Voss, a Dorset housewife, entered a supermarket belonging to Tesco Limited and bought a tin of Smedleys' peas. Disclaimer: This essay has been written by a law student and not by our expert law writers. Assumptions about future mark . Sweet v Parsley (1970) This is particularly the case with true crimes where conviction involves serious consequences, B v DPP (2000) Of course where an offence is unclear and yet involves issues of social concern, the courts are at liberty to interpret the crime as one of strict liability as they did in the Shah case. View examples of our professional work here. ACTUS non facit reum nisi mens sit rea is viewed as one of the key principles in common law principles of criminal liability.1 This principle is, however, highly abstract. Principles are thought to become authoritative in a minimum of two senses. Despite what has been said by my Noble and Learned friend, Viscount Dilhorne, to the contrary, I think this concession to have been right. It would have been possible but impracticable for the peas to have been collected in such a way as to avoid the possibility of a caterpillar being present in the can of peas. Such an avail of rigorous Liability is the one for which it was origin aloney made to stop good deal getting away without punishment because mens rea couldnt be proven. ACCEPT, (3) is of no practical effect (post, pp. Principles of criminal liability. Only full case reports are accepted in court. If he or she accidentally kills another person during this attempt, the mens rea of the attempt to kill the first person will be transferred to the death of the other person. Reference this Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not reflect the views of LawTeacher.net. Subscribers are able to see the revised versions of legislation with amendments. She would need her husband to accompany her, and sought an order requiring the respondent to provide clear guidelines on the . The defendant punched a mother holding her baby. P was applying in his own interest and that of all taxpayers and voters. 9A. 234 on its facts. The actus reus (Latin for 'guilty act') is made up of all the parts of a crime except the defendant's mental state. On 25th February, 1972, Mrs. Voss, a Dorset housewife, entered a supermarket belonging to Tesco Limited and bought a tin of Smedleys' peas. 29Monaghan, N, Criminal Law (Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2014) 25 et seq. It was contended by the defendants that the presence of the caterpillar in the tin was an unavoidable consequence of the process of collection or preparation and that they had established a defence under section 3 (3) of the Food and Drugs Act 1955; that the Act of 1955 did not impose a standard which called for a system of canning which was 100 per cent. Related documentation. 8Horder, J., Two histories and four hidden principles of mens rea (1997) L.Q.R. On the other hand, the appellants gave the fullest and most candid account of their processes which led the Magistrates to conclude that they, "had taken all reasonable care to prevent the presence of the caterpillar in the tin.". Decision of the Divisional Court of the Queen's Bench Division, 3. The essence of such crimes is to prevent harm rather than to punish a moral wrong26 Furthermore, it is claimed that strict liability has an element of deterrence by encouraging people to follow regulations to protect others from harm.27, A further argument for strict liability is based on the ease of proof, as it is easier for the prosecution to establish criminal liability when the state of mind does not need to be proved.28 Furthermore, it is possible to justify strict liability offences by reference to their sanctions. 1997, 113(Jan), 95-119, 95. Chat; Life and style; Entertainment; Debate and current affairs; Study help; University help and courses; Universities and HE colleges; Careers and jobs; Introduce yourself The offence is one of strict liability as the defendant had to be shown to have known that he was using the equipment. Thus, the courts seek to circumvent this principle in certain situations. The crime is one of social concern; or 3. The defendant met a girl under sixteen years of age in a street, and induced her to go with him to a place at some distance, where he seduced her, and detained her for some hours. Thereafter, the caterpillar achieved a sort of posthumous apotheosis. > > smedleys v breed 1974 case summary. In the case of Gammon Ltd v Attorney General of Hong Kong (1985), the courts gave guidance as to when a crime would be regarded as one of strict . 1Haughton v. Smith [1975] A.C. 467 at 491-492; Turner, Kennys Outlines of Criminal Law, 16th ed., (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952) 12-13. An example of data being processed may be a unique identifier stored in a cookie. (3) That section 3 (3) was to be construed as imposing a stringent obligation on a defendant (post, p. 987A-B, E-F) and since the caterpillar could readily have been removed from the peas had it been noticed, the defendants had failed to establish the defence on which they relied. Wright J stated: It is plain that if guilty knowledge is not necessary, no care on the part of the publican could save him from a conviction under section 16, subsection (2), since it would be as easy for the constable to deny that he was on duty when asked, or to produce a forged permission from his superior officer, as to remove his armlet before entering the public house. Before making any decision, you must read the full case report and take professional advice as appropriate. No defence was available to them as the court said that this eventuality was avoidable during the production process (albeit at a prohibitive cost). Smedleys V Breed 1974 15 Q What was Smedleys V Breed 1974 about? Updated daily, vLex brings together legal information from over 750 publishing partners, providing access to over 2,500 legal and news sources from the worlds leading publishers. The Magistrates' Court has jurisdiction to hearsummary offences, some triable either-way offences and the first hearing of indictable offences. Which case demonstrates this? The presumption of mens rea has been affirmed by the House of Lords to apply to all statutory offences.33 Accordingly, serious offences are more likely to need evidence of mens rea. In particular, strict liability offences may be necessary to preserve public wellbeing. The legislature no doubt recognised that as a matter of public policy this would be most unfortunate. The defendants were charged with causing polluted matter to enter a river contrary to s2 of the Rivers (Prevention of Pollution) Act 1951. He said he thought they both contained perfume. 3027. NOTE: The court seems to have been inconsistent in its use of terminology in the present case. Accordingly, in events that a person has wrongfully directed his or her conduct at a specific interest of another person, this form of malice would justify the criminal liability for the harm caused as a consequence, regardless of whether or not the harm and the degree of the harm suffered by the other person, was previously foreseen as a result. On the one hand, mens rea principles may have moral authority3 in the same way as any other legal principle, by being based on the soundest theory of guilt, which is applicable to the particular crime in question. An interesting issue in which the principle of coincidence is circumvented is in voluntary intoxication cases, such as in DPP v Majewski 1977.36 Here, it is argued that the person who voluntarily intoxicates him- or herself has the mens rea for basic intent offences due to recklessness. Mrs. Voss had bought a tin of garden peas with other articles from Tesco Stores Ltd., Dorchester, on February 25, 1972. According to Lord Bingham in R v G it is a statutory principle that conviction of serious crime should depend on proof not simply that the defendant caused (by act or omission) an injurious result to another but that his state of mind when so acting was culpable. Some of our partners may process your data as a part of their legitimate business interest without asking for consent. Horder, A Critique of the Correspondence Principle in Criminal Law [1995] Crim.L.R. The defendant company was convicted of "selling food not of the substance demanded by the purchaser" contrary to s2 (1) of the Food and Drugs Act 1955 (now replaced). She retained one room in the house for herself and visited occasionally to collect the rent and letters. Smedleys v Breed (1974) The D's, a large scale manufacturer of tinned peas, producing over 3 million tins in a seven week season, was convicted under the Food and Drugs Act (1955 . Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.if(typeof ez_ad_units != 'undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[300,250],'swarb_co_uk-medrectangle-3','ezslot_3',125,'0','0'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-swarb_co_uk-medrectangle-3-0'); Updated: 12 September 2022; Ref: scu.223562. You also get a useful overview of how the case was received. Advanced A.I. 7th Sep 2021 Whether we were right, on the facts found by us, to convict the appellant in this case.". The following will look into the theoretical ideas behind the mens rea requirement, the current legal framework of strict liability offences in criminal law and the way in which these are justified by the courts in order to answer the set question of whether it is justifiable to hold people responsible for criminal offences, when they did not form mens rea. Any information contained in this case summary does not constitute legal advice and should be treated as educational content only. They contended that the presence of the caterpillar in the tin was an unavoidable consequence of the process of collection or preparation and that they therefore had a defence under s3(3) of the 1955 Act. . This bibliography was generated on Cite This For Me on Friday, March 17, 2017. I will be able to explain the meaning of strict liability, giving reasons for its use I will be able to state and explain examples of strict liability using decided cases and Acts of Parliament. The defendant knew that the girl was in the custody of her father but he believed on reasonable grounds that the girl was aged 18. Lord Reid held that the strong inference that possession of a package by an accused was possession of its contents could be rebutted by raising real doubt either (a) whether the accused (if a servant) had both no right to open the package and no reason to suspect that the contents of the package were illicit, or (b) that (if the accused were the owner of the package) he had no knowledge of, or was genuinely mistaken as to, the actual contents or their illicit nature and received them innocently, and also that he had no reasonable opportunity since receiving the package to acquaint himself with its contents. The defendants had instituted and maintained a system whereby the peas were subject to visual examination by properly trained and experienced employees who were not permitted to remain on the inspection line for long periods and who were paid a bonus if they detected and removed extraneous matter. 2) P should consider whether prosecution serves a useful purpose before proceeding. Strict Liability. 339 affirmed. The appellants did not seek themselves to make use of this procedure as regards any third party, and thus the case before the Magistrates turned ( a) on the ability of the prosecution to prove the contravention by Tesco Limited, and the act or default of the appellants and ( b) on the ability of the appellants to establish a defence under section 3(3) of the Act. Both these principles have been supported by the labelling principle, which may constitute a further hidden principle in accordance with Horder.12 This latter principle explains that in the event that a certain type of criminal wrong is also mirrored in a morally substantial label, such as for example murder, it may be justified to recognise circumstances when the label is not justified or deserved, despite the harm having been caused. Lindley v. George W. Horner & Co. Ltd. [1950] 1 All E.R. Smedleys Ltd v Breed United Kingdom House of Lords 21 March 1974 . swarb.co.uk is published by David Swarbrick of 10 Halifax Road, Brighouse, West Yorkshire, HD6 2AG. 2 (1), 3 (3), Food and Drugs - Act or default of third person - Canners - Large quantities of peas canned - Proper system of inspection during processing - Caterpillar found in one tin supplied to retailer - Proceedings against suppliers -Whether presence of caterpillar unavoidable consequence of process of collection or preparation - Whether statutory defence established - Food and Drugs Act 1955, ss. The river had in fact been polluted because a pipe connected to the defendants factory had been blocked, and the defendants had not been negligent. The court has the power to sentence an offender to a maximum of 6 months imprisonment (for one offence) and/or up to 5000 fine. Updated daily, vLex brings together legal information from over 750 publishing partners, providing access to over 2,500 legal and news sources from the worlds leading publishers. The defendant was a landlady of a house let to tenants. The defendant ran off with an under-age girl. On opening the tin on February 29, 1972, she found a caterpillar in the tin among the peas. "In proceedings under section two of this Act in respect of any food containing some extraneous matter, it shall be a defence for the defendant to prove that the presence of that matter was an unavoidable consequence of the process of collection or preparation.". Note: a limited defence now exists under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. You also get a useful overview of how the case was received. To export a reference to this article please select a referencing stye below: UK law covers the laws and legislation of England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland.
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