#5819 - Inchoate Offences - Irish Criminal Law

Attempts

R v Eagleton (CCR 1854)

Facts

• The accused had a contract to supply loaves of bread to the homeless of a parish and was charged with attempting to defraud the guardians by providing loaves of less than the contracted weight.

Issue

• Attempts – Actus Reus

Judgment (Parke B)

• The actus reus of an attempt consists of acts which are immediately connected with the offence – in this case, the accused's delivery of the vouchers to the relevant officer was the last act required in order for him to receive the money and defraud the union, thus he was guilty of attempt.

Attorney General v Thornton (CCA 1950)

Facts

• The accused was charged with unlawfully attempting to procure a poison, knowing it was to be used to produce the miscarriage of a girl.

• This charge was brought on the basis that, in a meeting with the girl's doctor he made inquiries about a drug called ergot, “wasn't there some drug called ergot?”

Issue

• Attempts – Actus Reus

Judgment (Haugh J)

• The evidence in this case is too vague and uncertain to prove that the accused intended to use or have the drug used to procure an abortion – there is room for a reasonable doubt that the statement was not the actus reus of an attempt i.e. that it was in fact a mere show of intention or act of preparation.

Attorney General v O'Sullivan (SC 1963)

Facts

• The accused was a midwife who was charged with attempting to obtain money by false pretences with intent to defraud.

• She had submitted forms signifying that she had attended births which she had in fact not attended.

• The accused had to have been present at twenty five births in order to begin receiving per-birth fees.

Issue

• Attempts – Actus Reus

Judgment

• Ó Dálaigh CJ (concurring)

• Lavery J (dissenting)

• Walsh J (concurring)

• The question is whether the forms should be considered a mere preparation for the offence or acts sufficiently proximate to amount to attempts.

• Then ultimate impossibility of an attempted crime is not a defence.

• An act can be proximate if it is the first of a series of similar acts intended to result cumulatively in the crime.

• it can not be said that the preparation of one form is any less proximate than another because they were all aimed at the same object.

• Thus each false claim put in is an act sufficient to constitute an attempt.

DPP v Douglas & Hayes (CCA 1984)

Facts

• The defendants were charged of shooting with intent to commit murder.

• They appealed on the basis that the trial judge had given the jury the wrong instructions in regard the mens rea of the offence.

Issue

• Attempts – Mens Rea

Judgment (McWilliam J)

• This attempt requires an actual intention to commit the crime of murder, i.e. killing, not merely serious injury.

R v Khan (CA 1990)

Facts

• The accused was charged with attempted rape and claimed that the necessary mental element as regards consent was intent.

Issue

• Attempts – Mens Rea

Judgment (Russell LJ)

• The actual crime of rape requires knowledge of or recklessness in regard to the victim's consent.

• As the only difference between a rape and an attempted rape is the actual success of the act, there is no reason that the mens rea should be any different.

Attorney General's Reference No 3 of 1992

Facts

• The accused threw a petrol bomb at a number of people in a car, which missed and hit a wall.

• The accused was charged with attempted aggravated arson being reckless as to whether life would be endangered.

Issue

• Attempts – Mens Rea

Judgment

• The competed offence would consist of damage to property by the accused coupled with recklessness as to whether that property or any other property were damaged and recklessness as to whether life would thereby be endangered.

• The law of attempts is concerned with the intent to commit and offence – however, in this case, where the accused intended to damage property while his state of mind was that of recklessness in regard danger to life, there is no reason why there should not be a conviction for attempt.

• That said, if the throwing was not intended to result in damage to property, then an element of the offence was missing – to ground liability for attempts, the accused must be shown to have intended to supply the missing element of the attempt.

Conspiracy

Yip Chiu-Cheung v R (PC 1994)

Facts

• The plaintiff was convicted of conspiracy to export drugs after an American drug enforcement agent and another individual made an arrangement with him to do so.

• Separate verdicts were not delivered as to whether the accused had conspired with the Agent, the other individual, or both.

Issue

• Conspiracy

Judgment (Lord Griffiths)

• The mens rea for conspiracy is an intention to commit the crime in question.

• An undercover agent, policman etc. who infiltrates a criminal group and agrees to engage in crime with the intent of preventing it, lacks the requisite mens rea.

• In this case however, the agent did intend to commit the offence, even if it was with the best of motives.

• Thus the agent was a co-conspirator and the accused had the requisite mens rea for conspiracy.

People v Keane (CCA 1975)

Facts

• The accused was convicted in the Special Criminal Court of conspiracy to cause explosions with explosive substances.

Issue

• Conspiracy

Judgment (Walsh J)

• The evidence establishes that M and L was in possession of explosives, that the accused had a notebook with instructions for the making of bombs and that the fingerprints of the accused were on the containers of components of the bomb – this raises an inference that the accused was aware of and participant in the making of the explosives which is enough to ground a conviction for conspiracy even if the accused had not met either of his co-conspirators.

• Where a substantive offence can be established a prosecution should not be brought for conspiracy

• The liability of a conspirator is limited to the common purpose while he remains in it.

Scott v Metropolitan Police Commissioner (HoL 1974)

Facts

• The plaintiff agreed with the employees of a cinema to copy films for him to distribute them on a commercial scale.

Issue

• Conspiracy – Conspiracy to defraud

Judgment (Viscount Dilhorne)

• The contention that conspiracy to defraud requires deceit does not stand – 'defraud' has been used in too many branches of the criminal law to attempt a complete definition, but it does not require and element of deceit nor (obiter) economic loss.

• Generally speaking, to defraud someone is to deprive a person dishonestly of something which is his or of something which he is or would or might but for the perpetration of the fraud be entitled.

People v Open Door Counselling (HC 1986)

Facts

• The defendants were charged with conspiracy to corrupt public morals.

• They had been offering counselling to pregnant women which included the discussion of abortion and referral to abortion clinics in the UK.

Issue

• Conspiracy – Public Morals

Judgment (Hamilton P)

• Conspiracy to corrupt public morals is a crime – even where the conspirators are seeking to perform an act that is lawful, some acts, while not offences, are not lawful in the full sense and the law grants no licence to encourage others to engage in them.

• Acts which corrupt public morals are those which are destructive of the very fabric of society – in this case, the law and Constitution form threads of that fabric and both recognise the right to life of the unborn.

• However, whether something is corrupting or destructive of society must be left to a jury to ascertain.

R v Porter (CA 1980)

Facts

• The accused received a telephone call whereby he was asked to pick up some parcels in Scotland and deliver them to Northern Ireland.

• He inquired as to whether they contained ammunitition or guns and was warned not to talk about it.

• He went to the offices to pick up the parcel, but it had already been collected and he was charged of conspiracy to make available to persons in Northern Ireland materials that would be useful to terrorists.

Issue

• Conspiracy – Mens Rea

Judgment (Lord Lowry CJ)

• The offence was complete at the end of the telephone conversation – although the accused did not have absolute knowledge of all aspects of the conspiracy, he had sufficient knowledge of the essential matters (i.e. that the box would contain something of the nature of arms or ammunition) of the offence.

• At the time the telephone conversation was complete, the accused had the guilty knowledge of what he was to do and the guilty intent to do it.

R v Anderson (HoL 1985)

Facts

• The accused had agreed with his cell mate to spring him from prison while he was released on bail.

• He was injured in a road accident before completion of the scheme but intended to supply others involved with equipment to aid them.

• It was argued that he never intended that the plan be brought into effect, nor believed that it could succeed, thus was not guilty.

Issue

• Conspiracy – Mens Rea

Judgment

• Lord Scarman (concurring)

• Lord Diplock (concurring)

• Lord Keith of Kinkel (concurring)

• Lord Bridge of Harwich (concurring)

• It was not necessary that the intention to commit the offence was proved of each conspirator – someone who plays a role in a criminal conspiracy, e.g. a person who agrees to sell weapons for a bank robbery, may be indifferent as to whether or not the eventual crime is carried out.

• Parties who engaged in a criminal conspiracy with the intention of frustrating and exposing the criminal pupose of the others, should not be found guilty of conspiracy.

• If the...