Armed Robbery in UK Law

It is, however, unnecessary to go into that matter further because it is quite clear that whilst no doubt a confession of guilt is the highest conviction, nowhere is it stated either in Hale or Hawkins when the conviction occurred, It is quite clear that it does not occur at the time of the recording, because otherwise it would be impossible for a Judge to allow a plea to be changed, as it is recognised is perfectly possible up to sentence, and indeed in one of the case, a verdict of a Jury itself was set aside before sentence.

It is merely sufficient to say that in the ordinary case a Judge should allow the plea of guilty to stand. If he is acquitted of the armed robbery, then he can be sentenced on the count to which he has pleaded guilty. If, on the other hand, he is convicted of the armed robbery then the proper course for the Judge is to allow the count to which he has pleaded guilty to remain on the file and not to proceed to sentence him.

In other cases the accused may have joined criminal groups where the question whether he has by so doing voluntarily placed himself in a position where he was aware that he was likely to be subjected to duress will be less clear and the issue will have to be left to the jury.

Given the substance and purpose of the legislative provisions governing parole, the most that a convicted prisoner can legitimately expect is that his case will be examined individually in the light of whatever policy the Secretary of State sees fit to adopt provided always that the adopted policy is a lawful exercise of the discretion conferred upon him by the statute.

In the language of the criminal law a person who assists or encourages another to commit a crime is known as an accessory or secondary party. Similarly he shares the culpability precisely because he encouraged or assisted the offence. Sometimes it may be impossible for the prosecution to prove whether a defendant was a principal or an accessory, but that does not matter so long as it can prove that he participated in the crime either as one or as the other.

Paragraph 2 of article 2 of the Framework Decision is central to the main issue in this appeal. It sets out a list of offences which have been conveniently labelled "framework offences". These are not so much specific offences as kinds of criminal conduct, described in very general terms. Some of these, such as murder and armed robbery, are likely to feature, expressed in rather similar terms, in any developed criminal code.