Recent Judicial Decisions
| Published date | 01 January 1959 |
| Date | 01 January 1959 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0032258X5903200106 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
have enough offences already-especially if we are preparing for
promotion examinations.
Recent
Judicial
Decisions
ACCESSORY
BEFORE
THE
FACT:
NO
CRIME
WHEN
PRINCIPALS
ARE
ACQUITTED
Surujpaul v. The Queen
AN ACCESSORY before the fact is one who is absent at the time when
a felony is committed but procures, counsels, commands or abets
another to commit it. The difference between him and a principal
in the second degree is that the latter, though a participant in the
felonious purpose of the principal in the first degree, is not even
constructively present at the commission of the crime. But in all
these cases
there
is only one crime, although there may be more
than one person criminally liable in respect of it.
It
must be estab-
lished that the crime has been committed before there can be any
question of criminal guilt of participation in it. This principle led
to the reversal in a case of murder of the judgment of the Court of
Criminal Appeal of British Guiana by the Judicial Committee of
It
is true that one who
procures, advises, solicits or instigates in any way another person to
commit a crime is himself guilty of the common law misdemeanour
of incitement whether or not the offence solicited is carried out,
but
incitement is a different offence from the one which is solicited.
At the trial of the appellant in the Privy Council appeal together
with four others on a charge of murder the case for the prosecution
-that
the murder was committed while the accused were carrying
out a plot to steal
money-rested
largely on the evidence of an
accomplice going to prove the existence of the plot, and there was
material from which the jury might have drawn the inference that
the plan was carried out by all or some of the accused, and that in
the course thereof murder was committed. The jury, however, found
the appellant guilty as an accessory before the fact to murder, and
his co-accused (other than one who had been discharged)
not
guilty
either as accessories or as principals.
The
appellant contended that
those verdicts were contradictory and inconsistent on the ground
18 The Police Journal
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