R v Taylor
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 1950 |
| Date | 1950 |
| Court | Court of Criminal Appeal |
Criminal law - Bigamy - Defence - Absence of husband or wife for seven years - “Second marriage” - Defence available in case of any subsequent marriage -
On an indictment for bigamy the “second marriage” within the meaning of s. 57 of the Offences against the Person Act, 1861, with which the court is concerned is that which is the subject of the indictment, and if on the hearing of that charge it is proved that the lawful spouse had been absent for seven years, that defence is available to the person charged notwithstanding that person has previously committed bigamy with some other person or persons.
If, in the opinion of a full Court of Criminal Appeal, it appears that in a previous decision of the court the law has been either misapplied or misunderstood and that, as the result of a judge's having followed that decision, a person has been sentenced and imprisoned for an offence, it is the bounden duty of the court to reconsider its own earlier decision with a view to seeing whether that person was properly convicted.
APPEAL against convictions.
In 1925 the appellant, John William Taylor, was married to his Wife, Alice Julie Taylor, who was still alive at the time of the present proceedings but who had not been seen by the appellant since 1927 and was not known by him to be alive. In 1927 the appellant went through a form of marriage with another woman, and in 1942, having left that woman, he married a third. In 1944 he was charged with bigamy in respect of this last ceremony and was acquitted by reason of the fact that in those proceedings it was alleged that he had committed bigamy during the lifetime of the woman whom he had married in 1942, who was at that time believed by the prosecution to be his lawful wife. In 1945 he was charged at the Central Criminal Court in respect of his alleged bigamy in 1927 and was again acquitted because the prosecution could not at that time establish that his wife had been alive at the time of that marriage.
In 1946 he went through a ceremony of marriage with one Lilian Smithers and in 1948 with one Olive Briggs. In respect of those two ceremonies he was charged with bigamy at the Central Criminal Court in March, 1949, when he pleaded guilty to both charges and received a sentence of four years imprisonment. He applied for leave to appeal against that sentence. The application came before a court of three judges, who raised the question why, since the appellant had not seen or heard of his wife since 1927, he had not availed himself of the defence of seven years' absence afforded by the proviso to s. 57 of the Offences Against the Person Act, 1861F1.
The appellant's counsel informed the court that, in view of the decision in Rex v. TreanorF2 that the defence of absence for seven years was only available in the case of a second marriage and was not available on any subsequent occasion, he had not felt justified in raising it. The court intimated that in their view the decision in Rex v. TreanorF3 should receive further consideration by a full court, and accordingly gave leave to the appellant to appeal...
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