Court of Criminal Appeal
| DOI | 10.1177/002201835602000405 |
| Published date | 01 October 1956 |
| Date | 01 October 1956 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Court of
Criminal
Appeal
THE
ESSENTIALS OF FRAUDULENT CONVERSION
R.
v. Bryce
ON a charge of fraudulent conversion contrary to section
20
(I) (iv) (a) of
the
Larceny Act, 1916, it
must
be proved
that
money or property was entrusted to
the
prisoner for a
particular purpose;
that
he used it for some other purpose;
and
that
such misuse was fraudulent and dishonest.
These
may seem obvious points
but
it is
not
always easy to apply
the
law to the circumstances of a particular case, as R. v. Bryce
(40 Cr. App. R. 62) shows.
The
appellant was convicted at quarter sessions of obtain-
ing credit while an undischarged bankrupt, for which he was
sentenced to two years' imprisonment, and also on four counts
alleging fraudulent conversion of money, for which he was
sentenced to three years' imprisonment.
In
quashing
the
conviction on these four counts the
Court
(Lord
Goddard,
C.J., Hallett and Pearson
JJ.)
considered the chairman's
direction to the
jury
on the ingredients of the offence of
fraudulent conversion.
The
chairman, it was held, amply
directed the
jury
on the materials which existed to enable
them
to come to the conclusion that
the
actions of the appellant
had been dishonest.
The
jury
took
that
view and the
Court
saw no reason to differ from them. But with regard to
the
first
ingredient of the offence, namely,
that
there was an entrusting
for a specific purpose, there appeared to the Court to have been
no real direction to the
jury
at all, and even if there had been a
direction on such materials as were disclosed in the summing-
up,
the
Court doubted whether there was any evidence
that
the
money was in fact entrusted for a specific purpose.
What
happened was this.
The
appellant went
round
and
found some people who wanted what may be described as
gardening work done for them. He offered to do it
and
agreed
aprice with them.
Then,
on various pretexts
that
he would
have to
buy
material
and
so forth, which varied slightly in
350
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