Intoxication and Inflicting Grievous Bodily Harm
| Author | David Cowley |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/002201839906300537 |
| Published date | 01 October 1999 |
| Date | 01 October 1999 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Intoxication
and
Inflicting
Grievous
Bodily
Harm
of
the
section. The final point is more intriguing.
If
the accused refused
to
return
to the witness box would the Crown be entitled to rely
upon
s. 35 of the Criminal Justice
and
Public Order Act 1994? The section
appears to apply
where
aperson (which by definition includes the
accused), having been sworn,
without
good cause refuses to answer
any
question properly
put
to him. In the present case neither their Lordships
nor counsel appears to have expressly considered s. 35.
Breach
of
PACE
The consensus of academic
and
judicial opinion ap-
pears to welcome the
judgment
in
Forbes.
The writer remains to be
convinced that it is necessary to conduct aparade
whenever
asuspect
disputes identification. For example, let us assume that the purported
identification of a suspect by a witness
turns
solely on identification by
clothing?
What
possible purpose would an identification parade serve?
(See D v
DPP
The
Times,
July 19 1998.) The Code does
not
appear to
specify when
an
identification parade shall be conducted. Accordingly, it
is respectfully submitted that there is little purpose to be served in
conducting aparade
many
months after the alleged incident. Having
briefly exposed one or two flaws in Code D,
and
the
raison
d'itre behind
the latest ruling, it was surprising to learn that their Lordships
had
not
seen a full transcript of Rv
Bell.
In
that
case, the Court of Appeal
reviewed
the
authorities in depth
and
reached apragmatic
but
fair
resolution to
the
vexed issue of identification evidence generally
and
more important the applicability of Code D.
F.
G.
Davies
Intoxication
and
Inflicting Grievous Bodily Harm
R v
Richardson
and Irwin [1999] 1 Cr App R 392
The defendants, the victim
and
their friends,
who
were all university
students, spent an evening drinking together at the university
and
then
began to indulge in horseplay during the course of which
the
victim was
lifted by
the
defendants over the edge of a balcony
and
dropped. He fell
10 to 12 feet
and
was seriously injured. The defendants were charged
with
unlawfully
and
maliciously inflicting grievous bodily harm, con-
trary to s 20of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861. The prosecu-
tion case was
that
the defendants had together acted
both
unlawfully
and
maliciously, whereas the defendants' case was that the victim
had
consented to the horseplay
and
that his fall was an accident. The key
issue was
that
of
mens
rea,
l.e.
had
the defendants acted 'maliciously'?
The prosecution contended that they
had
so acted since, although they
had
not
intended to drop the victim
and
cause
him
harm, they each
actually foresaw that dropping the victim would or might cause
harm
and they nevertheless took the risk of doing so.
The defendants were convicted after the trial judge
had
directed the
jury
that
they
had
to consider each defendant's intention
on
the
basis of
areasonable (i.e.
not
under
the influence of drink)
man
and
not
(as they
463
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