It was alleged that the defendant had tampered with a sample of wheat to be used in an arbitration, and he was accused of perverting the course of justice.
Held: Perverting the course of justice is a common law offence covering a wide variety of situations. The offence was committed when a person does an act or embarks on a course of conduct which tends and is intended to pervert the course of justice. The offence can be committed in otherwise wholly civil proceedings, and there is no closed list of acts which may give rise to the offence and it would be wrong to confine it to the specific instances or categories which have so far appeared in the reported cases. An act is not beyond the ambit of those tending to pervert the course of justice by reason of its being performed after the crime but before investigations into the alleged crime have begun. Whether an act has a tendency to pervert the course of justice cannot depend upon whether investigation of the matter which may become the subject of court proceedings has begun.
cs Lord Coleridge CJ: ‘The first count of the indictment in substance charges the defendant with the misdemeanour of attempting, by the manufacture of false evidence, to mislead a judicial tribunal which might come into existence. If the act itself of the defendant was completed, I cannot doubt that to manufacture false evidence for the purpose of misleading a judicial tribunal is a misdemeanour. Here, in point of fact, no tribunal was misled, because the piece of evidence was not used; but I am of opinion that that fact makes no difference.’ and ‘I think that an attempt to pervert the course of justice is in itself a punishable misdemeanour; and though I should myself have thought so on the grounds of sense and reason, there is also plenty of authority to show that it is a misdemeanour in point of law.’
Pollock B: ‘The real offence here is the doing of some act which has a tendency and is intended to pervert the administration of public justice.’
Pollock B, Lord Coleridge CJ
(1891) 1 QB 360, 60 LJMC 62
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Regina v Clark CACD 4-Apr-2003
The defendant had been involved in a car crash. He drove his car home, and reported the accident only the following day. He appealed against a conviction for attempting to pervert the course of justice, having defeated any possibility of his being . .
Cited – Re S 36 Criminal Justice Act 1972; Attorney General’s Reference No 1 of 2002 CACD 14-Oct-2002
The court was asked: ‘Whether the common-law offence of perverting the course of public justice is committed where false evidence is given or made, not to defeat what the witness believes to be the ends of justice, or not to procure what the witness . .
Cited – Kenny v Regina CACD 30-Jan-2013
The appellant had made a loan to a third party defendant in criminal fraud proceedings. At the time he did not know that that third party was subject to a restraint order under the 2002 Act. When he did come to know of the order he was asked to say . .
Cited – The Director of Public Prosecutions v SK Admn 10-Feb-2016
The prosecutor appealed against dismissal of a charge of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. The defendant had completed somebody else’s community service sentence. The prosecutor said that such an act did affect something ‘in the course of . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Crime
Leading Case
Updated: 01 November 2021; Ref: scu.181076