The defendants appealed against their convictions for murder. None had themselves inflicted any violence, but were convicted as part of a joint enterprise. They said they had not known that the principal carried a knife. They said that the evidence showed that the knife wound had been intended to kill, but that it was only shown that they had anticipated a serious injury falling short of that murder. The judge had not directed the jury that the defendants had to be shown to have been party to the intention inferred.
Held: The appeals failed.
The law must necessarily include mechanisms for convicting those who take part in a criminal activity without themselves carrying out the central acts, and ‘Given the fluid, fast-moving course of events in incidents such as that which culminated in the killing of the deceased, incidents which are unhappily not rare, it must often be very hard for jurors to make a reliable assessment of what a particular defendant foresaw as likely or possible acts on the part of his associates. It would be even harder, and would border on speculation, to judge what a particular defendant foresaw as the intention with which his associates might perform such acts. It is safer to focus on the defendant’s foresight of what an associate might do, an issue to which knowledge of the associate’s possession of an obviously lethal weapon such as a gun or a knife would usually be very relevant. ‘
and ‘In the prosecution of a principal offender for murder, it is not necessary for the prosecution to prove or the jury to consider whether the defendant intended on the one hand to kill or on the other to cause really serious injury. That is legally irrelevant to guilt. The rationale of that principle plainly is that if a person unlawfully assaults another with intent to cause him really serious injury, and death results, he should be held criminally responsible for that fatality, even though he did not intend it. If he had not embarked on a course of deliberate violence, the fatality would not have occurred. This rationale may lack logical purity, but it is underpinned by a quality of earthy realism. To rule that an undisclosed and unforeseen intention to kill on the part of the primary offender may take a killing outside the scope of a common purpose to cause really serious injury, calling for a distinction irrelevant in the case of the primary offender, is in my view to subvert the rationale which underlies our law of murder. ‘
Lord Brown said: ‘If the principal (the killer) was at all times intent on killing the victim and the secondary party was not, then it is simply unrealistic to talk in terms of their sharing a common purpose. But that matters nothing. Once the wider principle was recognised (or established), as it was in Chan Wing-Siu and Hyde, namely that criminal liability is imposed on anyone assisting or encouraging the principal in his wrongdoing who realises that the principal may commit a more serious crime than the secondary party himself ever intended or wanted or agreed to, then the whole concept of common purpose became superfluous. ‘ and
‘The qualification to the Hyde direction established by English concerns simply the secondary party’s foresight of possible acts by the principal constituting more serious offences than the secondary party himself was intending, acts to which he never agreed and which from his standpoint were entirely unwanted and unintended. But an act is an act and either its possibility is foreseen or it is not. I see no possible reason or justification for further complicating this already problematic area of the law by requiring juries to consider and decide whether the principal’s intent when killing the victim was the full intent to kill or the usual lesser intent to cause GBH. Whichever it was, the act was the act of killing and the only question arising pursuant to the English qualification is whether the possibility of killing in that way (rather than in some fundamentally different way) was foreseen by the accessory-whether the act which caused the death was, as Sir Robin Cooke had put it in Chan Wing Siu, ‘of a type’ foreseen by the secondary party.’
Lord Bingham of Cornhill, Lord Scott of Foscote, Lord Rodger of Earlsferry, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury
[2008] UKHL 45, [2008] 3 WLR 264, Times 07-Jul-2008, [2009] 1 Cr App Rep 1, [2008] Crim LR 979, [2009] AC 129, [2008] 4 All ER 351
Bailii, HL
England and Wales
Citing:
Appeal from – Regina v Rahman; Regina v Akram; Regina v Amin; Regina v Ali CACD 23-Feb-2007
The defendants appealed their convictions for murder. There had been a joint violent attack, but each said they did not know that the principle assailant carried and would use a knife, and said the judge’s directions on joint enterprise were . .
Cited – Regina v Cunningham HL 8-Jul-1981
A defendant may be convicted of murder if it is established either (1) that he had an intent to kill or (2) that he had an intent to cause really serious bodily injury.
Intention is a state of mind which can never be proved as a fact. It can . .
Cited – Brown and Isaac v The State PC 29-Jan-2003
PC (Trinidad and Tobago) The defendants appealed their convictions for murder on a joint enterprise basis.
Held: If more than one person participates, in whatever capacity, in attacking a victim, each . .
Cited – Regina v Powell (Anthony) and Another; Regina v English HL 30-Oct-1997
When the court looked at the issue of foreseeability of murder in an allegation of joint enterprise, there was no requirement to show intent by the secondary party. The forseeability of the risk of the principal committing the offence from the point . .
Cited – Regina v Smith (Wesley) 1963
A group of men set upon a man in a bar and he was stabbed to death.The court considered the law of joint offences. The trial judge had directed the jury: ‘Manslaughter is unlawful killing without an intent to kill or do grievous bodily harm. Anybody . .
Cited – Chan Wing-Siu v The Queen PC 21-Jun-1984
The appellant and co-accused were charged with murder. They said they had gone to meet the deceased to collect a debt, but had been attacked with a knife by the deceased. Two of the three had knives and knew of the other knife.
Held: All were . .
Cited – Regina v Anderson; Regina v Morris CACD 1966
The court considered criminal liability under the joint enterprise rule where the principle took the action beyond what had been anticipated. Parker CJ said: ‘It seems to this court that to say that adventurers are guilty of manslaughter when one of . .
Cited – Regina v Gamble 1989
Four members of the Ulster Volunteer Force had combined to inflict punishment on an allegedly delinquent member of the organisation. The punishment was to consist of knee-capping (the firing of a bullet or bullets into a knee or other joint, so as . .
Cited – McAuliffe v The Queen 28-Jun-1995
Austlii (High Court of Australia) Criminal Law – Murder – Complicity – Common purpose to assault victim – Death – Direction that jury might convict if satisfied accused contemplated that intentional infliction of . .
Cited – Regina v Uddin CACD 19-Mar-1998
A co-accused in a murder by a gang, where the existence of the murder weapon which was used, was outside the expectation of the defendant, need not himself be guilty, because of the different circumstances which applied in his case. . .
Cited – Davies v Director of Public Prosecutions HL 1954
Half a dozen youths engaged in a fist fight with another group, but one of their number suddenly produced a knife and stabbed one of their opponents to death. One of the prosecution witnesses was a youth named Lawson. He gave evidence of an oral . .
Cited – Regina v Hyde, Sussex, Collins CACD 1990
Lord Lane CJ restated the principle underlying the responsibility of a secondary partner in a joint enterprise: ‘If B realises (without agreeing to such conduct being used) that A may kill or intentionally inflict serious injury, but nevertheless . .
Cited by:
Cited – Mitchell and Another, Regina v CACD 4-Nov-2008
The appellant challenged their convictions as ancillary parties to a murder, particularly as to the joint enterprise direction. There had been a scuffle outside a pub. The appellant went away with others to a nearby house, and returned with them . .
Cited – Gnango, Regina v CACD 26-Jul-2010
The defendant appealed against his conviction for murder. He had engaged in a street battle using guns. A bullet from an opponent killed an innocent passer by. The court was asked whether the principles of joint venture and transferred malice could . .
Cited – Jogee and Ruddock (Jamaica) v The Queen SC 18-Feb-2016
Joint Enterprise Murder
The two defendants appealed against their convictions (one in Jamaica) for murder, under the law of joint enterprise. Each had been an accessory when their accomplice killed a victim with a knife. The judge in Jogee had directed the jury that he . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Crime
Updated: 02 November 2021; Ref: scu.270657