Judicial Committee of the Privy Council
| DOI | 10.1177/002201836703100307 |
| Published date | 01 July 1967 |
| Date | 01 July 1967 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Judicial Committee of the
Privy
Council
AIDING AND ABETTING MURDER
Mohan v. The Queen
WHERE two men attack another and wound
him
so
badly that he eventually dies, may they both be
convicted of murder, if it cannot be shown which of
them
inflicted
the
fatal wounds and it cannot be proved
that
they
were acting
under
apre-arranged plan?
The
appellants in
Mohan v. The Queen(1967,2
W.L.R.
676; 2
All
E.R. 58) were
father and son.
The
son engaged in a quarrel with
the
deceased;
the
father came on
the
scene with a cutlass and
"ran
him around" with it;
the
son
then
produced a cutlass and,
together, the father and son inflicted several wounds on
the
deceased, including a severe leg wound and a chest wound.
The
deceased died in hospital of an embolism.
The
appeal
was conducted on
the
assumption
that
the
leg wound might
have been
the
sole cause of death,
but
it was not established
which of
the
accused had inflicted this wound.
It
was also
assumed for
the
purpose of
the
appeal
that
the
evidence
did
not establish any pre-arranged plan to attack
the
deceased.
The
two accused were convicted of murder in Trinidad
and appealed on
the
ground
that
unless it could be shown
that
they had been acting in accordance with apre-concerted plan,
the
prosecution should have been called on to establish which
of
them
had inflicted
the
fatal wound.
The
prosecution argued
that, to uphold aconviction of murder, it was enough to show
that
the
accused were jointly attacking
the
deceased with
highly dangerous weapons, for this meant
that
each was
actively participating in
the
attack and aiding and abetting
the
other, so
that
each was rightly convicted as a principal offender
whether in
the
first or second degree.
Upholding
the
conviction,
Lord
Pearson said:
"It
is
impossible on the facts of this case to contend
that
the fatal
blow was outside
the
scope of the common intention.
The
two
198
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