Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-17T19:13:34.634Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

SHORN-OFF COMPLICITY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 July 2016

Get access

Extract

CRIMINAL complicity has been dramatically changed by the combined decisions of the UK Supreme Court and the Privy Council in Jogee; Ruddock [2016] UKSC 8; [2016] UKPC 7; [2016] 2 W.L.R. 681. At least since the Accessories and Abettors Act 1861, it has been settled that a person (S) who has intentionally assisted or encouraged another (P) to commit a crime has been liable to be tried, convicted, and punished as if S was a principal. For decades, there has also been a much-debated, additional form of complicity where the accomplice was “parasitically” liable for further crimes committed by P beyond the scope of a common criminal purpose shared by S and P. For that kind of liability, the accomplice need not have assisted or encouraged the further crime but need only have foreseen that it was a possible incident of the common purpose. The effect of Jogee and Ruddock is that this further form of complicity, first recognised explicitly in the Privy Council decision of Chan Wing-Siu [1985] A.C. 168 and later endorsed by the House of Lords in Powell; English [1999] 1 A.C. 1, has been shorn off the criminal law. As a result, Chan Wing-Siu directions will no longer be given to juries.

Type
Case and Comment
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge Law Journal and Contributors 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)