Strict Liability and the Reasonable Excuse Defence
| Published date | 01 August 2012 |
| Date | 01 August 2012 |
| DOI | 10.1350/jcla.2012.76.4.778 |
| Author | Alan Reed |
| Subject Matter | Court of Appeal |
Court of Appeal
Strict Liability and the Reasonable Excuse Defence
Rv Unah [2011] EWCA Crim 1837
Keywords Strict liability; Presumption of mens rea; Identity Cards Act
2006; Reasonable excuse
The appellant was a Nigerian with indefinite leave to remain in the UK.
She was found to have a false passport in her possession. This came to
light when she attended a job centre in order to apply for a National
Insurance number. She produced a valid current passport and an ex-
pired passport which was in fact false. The biographical section of the
passport, which included the photograph, was found to be counterfeit.
She claimed that she had no knowledge of that state of affairs. The
appellant contended that she had asked a friend who travelled regularly
between the UK and Nigeria to obtain the passport for her, and it was her
understanding that it was genuine. She contended that this belief consti-
tuted a reasonable excuse for not having a passport in her possession
within the meaning of s. 25(5) of the Identity Cards Act 2006:
(5) It is an offence for a person to have in his possession or under his
control, without reasonable excuse—
(a) an identity document that is false;
(b) an identity document that was improperly obtained;
(c) an identity document that relates to someone else . . .
At first instance the trial judge concluded that Parliament’s intention
in s. 25(5) of the Identity Cards Act 2006 must have been to create a
strict liability offence. The concept of reasonable excuse would, in the
judge’s view, apply to cases where a defendant, for example, found a
false passport and had it in his possession with the intention of handing
it in to the police. It was judicially determined, however, that no
authority prevailed which justified interpreting the term ‘without rea-
sonable excuse’ so as to include the state of mind of a defendant as to the
quality of the article possessed or its nature. It was held that the
defendant knew this was a passport, and the fact that she may have
mistakenly assumed that it was genuine was irrelevant to liability,
although it would be relevant at the sentencing stage. The defendant
was sentenced to a community sentence with a requirement to carry out
100 hours of unpaid work, and appealed on the basis that the judge
wrongly construed the legislation as imposing strict liability.
H
ELD
,
ALLOWING THE APPEAL
, it was considered that the trial judge
had erred in his ruling, at least to the extent that he found that the
circumstances of the defendant being put in possession of the passport
were irrelevant to the issue of reasonable explanation. There was no
reason why the defendant in this case ought not to be able to rely upon
the genuine belief that the document was valid as an element in her
basis for contending that she had a reasonable excuse for having this
document in her possession.
293The Journal of Criminal Law (2012) 76 JCL 293–302
doi:10.1350/jcla.2012.76.4.778
To continue reading
Request your trial