(Jamaica) The appellant police officer had been convicted that by his negligence he had allowed two prisoners to escape from custody. Given doubt that they were in fact lawfully in custody he argued that there was an onus on the prosecution to establish that there was a lawful custody from which to escape. There was no affirmative evidence that the prisoners had ever been lawfully detained.
Held: The appeal was allowed. The courts will not allow a point central to the allegation to be presumed.
Lord Fraser said: ‘Their Lordships are of the opinion that it was essential for the Crown to establish that the arrest and detention were lawful and that the omission to do so was fatal to the conviction of the defendant. . . The lawfulness of the detention was a necessary precondition for the offence of permitting escape, and it is well established that the courts will not presume the existence of facts which are central to an offence . . It has to be remembered that in every case where a police officer commits the offence of negligently permitting a prisoner to escape from lawful custody, the prisoner himself commits an offence by escaping and it would be contrary to the fundamental principles of law that the onus should be upon a prisoner to rebut a presumption that he was being lawfully detained which he could only do by the (notoriously difficult) process of proving a negative.’
Judges:
Lord Fraser
Citations:
[1982] AC 484, [1982] UKPC 1a, (1982) 74 Cr App R 274, [1982] 2 WLR 538, [1982] 1 All ER 1017, [1982] Crim LR 438
Links:
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Regina v Dhilon (Pritpal) CACD 23-Nov-2005
The defendant appealed his conviction for escaping from lawful custody. He had been arrested, but then taken to and left at a local hospital. No officer stayed with him, and he later left and went home.
Held: His appeal succeeded. All the . .
Cited – Dhillon, Regina v CACD 23-Nov-2005
The defendant had been arrested and then taken to hospital for treatment. On completion of his treatment, he could not find the constable, so went home. He now appealed from conviction of escape contrary to common law.
Held: The prosecution . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Crime
Updated: 23 November 2022; Ref: scu.236330