Three men, alleged by the Crown to be supporters of the IRA, armed with weapons, went to the house of an army officer at night. When he opened the door one of them shot him. Two were convicted of murder; the third, Reid, was acquitted of murder but convicted of manslaughter. All three were also convicted of joint possession of a revolver, knife and imitation gun. His defence had been that he was not part of the joint venture but had gone along with them in order to see whether the other two were really IRA terrorists, which he did not believe they were. The judge had given the jury a direction on manslaughter based upon Church.
Held: The appeal failed.
Lawton LJ said: ‘In Anderson and Morris . . a distinction was drawn between a mere unforeseen consequence of an unlawful act and an ‘overwhelmingly supervening event which is of such a character that it will relegate into history matters which would otherwise be looked upon as causative factors’; see the judgment of Lord Parker CJ at . . 120. Was O’Conaill’s deliberate firing of the revolver ‘a mere unforeseen consequence’ of the unlawful possession of offensive weapons? We adjudge it was. When two or more men go out together in joint possession of offensive weapons such as revolvers and knives and the circumstances are such as to justify an inference that the very least they intend to do with them is to use them to cause fear in another, there is, in our judgment, always a likelihood that, in the excitement and tensions of the occasion, one of them will use the weapon in some way which will cause death or serious injury. If such injury was not intended by the others, they must be acquitted of murder; but having started out on an enterprise which envisaged some degree of violence, albeit nothing more than causing fright, they will be guilty of manslaughter.’
Judges:
Lawton, Geoffrey Lane LJJ and Robert Goff J
Citations:
(1976) 62 Cr App R 109
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Stewart and Another, Regina v CACD 10-Nov-1994
Hobhouse LJ said: ‘The question whether the relevant act was committed in the course of carrying out the joint enterprise in which the defendant was a participant is a question of fact not law. If the act was not so committed then the joint . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Crime
Updated: 04 May 2022; Ref: scu.553627