The defendants appealed convictions for assault saying that the judge’s directions to the jury given in answer to a question from them after retirement made their convictions unsafe. The jury had asked whether one defendant alone could be found guilty of the more serious assault. The judge answered that they were charged jointly. It was said his answer should have been clearer.
Held: The appeal succeeded.
‘the learned judge’s further direction, with its reference to somebody being a party to an intention to cause grievous bodily harm, begs a question. The question begged is what has to be proved to make someone a party to the intention of somebody else? We are conscious that sometimes an apparent ambiguity appears on paper whereas the position was at trial completely clear in the context in which the words were spoken. We have therefore looked at the body of the summing-up in order to see whether the case had so plainly been left to the jury on the basis that actual intention to cause grievous bodily harm had to be proved against any defendant before that defendant could be guilty of the section 18 offence that this jury could not have been misled. We regret that we do not think that we can say that the matter had clearly been left to this jury on that basis.’
Citations:
[1998] EWCA Crim 3164
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Criminal Practice
Updated: 16 September 2022; Ref: scu.156038
