The defendant appealed his conviction for attempting to handle stolen goods, saying that that the time of his act, the goods were no longer stolen, having been taken into lawful custody by the police.
Held: The appeal failed. Lord Widgery CJ discussed the legal implications of inchoate, but uncompleted, sequences of actions in cases which might or might not amount to criminal attempts, identifying two classes of case: ‘The type of case where the accused has embarked on a course of conduct which, if completed, will result in an offence but for some reason breaks off that course of conduct and never completes the action required to amount to the offence.’ This would include ‘pickpocket who puts his hand in a man’s pocket only to find it empty; the burglar who is disturbed by the police when he is in the process of trying to break open the window; the safebreaker who finds when he gets to the safe, it is too difficulty for him and he cannot open it.
In general a charge of attempt can properly be laid in that type of case’.
It was otherwise, he thought, in the second class of case which he described as follows: ‘Where the accused has meticulously and in detail followed every step of his intended course believing throughout that he was committing a criminal offence and when in the end it is found he has not committed a criminal offence because in law that which he planned and carried out does not amount to a criminal offence at all.’ In such a case a criminal attempt had not been committed.
Judges:
Lord Widgery CJ
Citations:
[1973] 2 WLR 944
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Appeal from – Haughton v Smith, On Appeal From Regina v Smith (Roger) HL 21-Nov-1973
The defendant appealed against his conviction for attempting to handle stolen goods. They were to be delivered to him in a van, but the meat was intercepted and recovered by the police. The defendant argued that he should not be convicted of . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Crime
Updated: 27 October 2022; Ref: scu.254527