R v Exall and Others
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 01 January 1866 |
| Date | 01 January 1866 |
| Court | Crown Court |
English Reports Citation: 176 E.R. 850
KINGSTON CROWN COURT.
Kingston Crown Court, Surrey Spring Assizes, 1866, coram Pollock, C B. regina v exall and others (On a charge of burglary, possession by the prisoners of part of the stolen property very soon after the burglary, with an account given of it not reasonable or credible, is sufficient pnmd facie evidence, without express evidence to falsify it It is so, however, only if upon all the circumstances in the case the account given is not reasonably credible ) The prisoners, three men named Exall, Edwards, and Skelton, were indicted for burglary in Kingston, and stealing a sum of money in gold, silver, and copper ; a watch, and watch chain, &c Pearee for the prosecution. Lilley for the prisoners. On the night of the 21st of December last, the premises were broken open, and some time after eleven that night, the money and articles mentioned stolen The prisoners were seen together on that night at a public-house not far off, and they were seen together early in the morning In the morning, two of them, Edwards and Exall, were apprehended together on suspicion , and on one of them, Exall, the watch was found. The other prisoner, Skelton, was taken some time afterwards, and upon him was found a piece of money, identified as part of the money stolen, and which he said he had from Edwards, which Edwards did not deny. [923] Pollock, C. B , to the jury.-The fact that the three prisoners were found together on the night of the burglary, and also the next morning, would be of little importance, unless one of them was proved to have been concerned in the burglary. The great question is, whether any one or more of them was concerned in the burglary. And of that the chief evidence is the possession by one of them of part of the plunder on the morning of the burglary. Property recently stolen, found in the possession of a person, is always presumptive evidence against that person, unless the possession can be accounted for and explained consistently with innocence (6). (a) This was the real ground of the opinion of the Lord Chief Justice. It is true he tomched slightly on the other point, as to the cause of death , but as to this, there could be.no real doubt, for aconite was peculiarly fatal in diseases of the heart; and there-foce the fact that the deceased had that disease, only proved more clearly that aconite was the cause of the death, which indeed was the obvious and almost immediate result of the dose, the deadly symptoms coming on at once, and being those of aconite. The real ground of the opinion was, that even a culpable mistake, and some degree of culpable negligence, is not felonious, unless it be so gross as to be reckless. (J) There was some reason to believe that the venerable Lord Chief Baron embraced this opportunity of explaining those remarks upon the principles of presumptive proof, which he had explained in the case of R. v. Mutter, alluded to in the note to re White (vide ante, p. [383]), and which, not having been reported by any legal reporter, had been misapprehended. The learned Lord Chief Baron, whose immense experience and intellectual endowments would give great weight to anything he laid down on suoh a subject, referred in that case, to the case in which he had heard the late Lord Temterden Lay down the doctrine of presumptive proof; and no doubt the case of R. v. Burdett, 4 B. & Aid., cited so fully in the note just referred to There can be no doubt that the Lord Chief Baron intended to adhere to the doctrine so laid down, and certainly in the present case-and in the next-he did explain it entirely in accordance with the lucid exposition of it by Lord Tenterden The most familiar illustra- 4 F, & F. 984 REGINA V. EXALL 851 [924] The principle is this, that if a person is found in possession of property reoently stolen, and of which he can give no reasonable account, a jury are justified in coming to tha conclusion that he committed the robbery. tion of the doctrine given by Lord Tenterden is, that of possession of property recently stolen. No one ever doubted that it was-if so soon after the robbery, and under such...
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Fortune and Others v Wiltshire Council and Another
...tribunal may consider in deciding whether or not to draw an inference is almost limitless. As Pollock CB famously directed the jury in R v Exall (1866) 4 F & F 922: "It has been said that circumstantial evidence is to be considered as a chain, and each piece of evidence as a link in the cha......
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