The defendant and a co-accused had sexually assaulted a boy. He appealed saying that the co-defendant had secretly administered drugs to him.
Held: The appeal succeeded. Involuntary intoxication can be a sufficient defence to a criminal charge, since it has the effect of denying mens rea. Lord Taylor CJ said: ‘In our judgment, the question can be answered by turning to first principles. The importance of ensuring, under a system of law, that members of the community are safeguarded in their persons and property is obvious and was firmly stated in Reg. v. Majewski [1977] AC 443 (see for example the speech of Lord Edmund Davies at p 495). However, the purpose of the criminal law is to inhibit, by proscription and by penal sanction, anti-social acts which individuals may otherwise commit. Its unspoken premise is that people may have tendencies and impulses to do those things which are considered sufficiently objectionable to be forbidden. Having paedophiliac inclinations and desires is not proscribed; putting them into practice is. If the sole reason why the threshold between the two has been crossed is or may have been that the inhibition which the law requires has been removed by the clandestine act of a third party, the purposes of the criminal law are not served by nevertheless holding that the person performing the act is guilty of an offence. A man is not responsible for a condition produced ‘by stratagem, or the fraud of another.’ If therefore drink or a drug, surreptitiously administered, causes a person to lose his self control and for that reason to form an intent which he would not otherwise have formed, it is consistent with the principle that the law should exculpate him because the operative fault is not his. The law permits a finding that the intent formed was not a criminal intent or, in other words, that the involuntary intoxication negatives the mens rea. As was pointed out in argument, there is some analogy to be found here in the rationale underlying the defence of duress. While it is not necessary for the decision of this case, it appears to us that if the principle applies where the offence is one of basic intent, it should apply also where the offence is one of specific intent.
We would add that there must be evidence capable of giving rise to the defence of involuntary intoxication before a judge is obliged to leave the issue to the jury. However, once there is an evidential foundation for the defence, the burden is upon the Crown to prove that the relevant intent was formed and that notwithstanding the evidence relied on by the defence it was a criminal intent.
By answering the first of the questions put to him at the beginning of the trial in the negative, the learned judge may have inhibited a sufficient ventilation of this issue at a later stage. Further, by summing up as he did, the learned judge effectively withdrew the issue from the jury. In our judgment, that amounted to a material misdirection.’
Judges:
Lord Taylor CJ
Citations:
Gazette 16-Jun-1993, Independent 11-May-1993, Times 10-May-1993, [1994] QB 81
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Citing:
Cited – Director of Public Prosecutions v Majewski HL 1976
The defendant took a cocktail of drink and drugs and, whilst intoxicated, assaulted pub landlord. He said that he did not know what he was doing, and had no mens rea, that self-induced intoxication could be a defence to a charge of assault, and that . .
Cited by:
Appeal from – Regina v Kingston HL 22-Jul-1994
Involuntary Intoxication not a General Defence
The prosecutor appealed an acquittal on appeal of the defendant for sexual assault, saying that he had not had the necessary intent because of intoxication through drink and drugs. He said that a co-defendant had secretly administered drugs to him. . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Crime
Updated: 25 October 2022; Ref: scu.87084
