Talk:Criminal Law Act 1967

Note
There is a further apparent effect of s.5(5) that I have not stated yet (to do with the possibilty of circumventing the restrictions created by s.5(1) by charging facts that amount to compounding as a different offence - perverting the course of justice has been suggested by another editor).James500 (talk) 12:29, 1 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Archbold at 28-8 mentions a case, R. v. Hammersley 42 Cr. App. R. 207, CCA, which says that corruptly receiving a reward to hinder prosecutions may be charged with perverting the course of justice. Richard75 (talk) 19:09, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I know, I've seen it. I am not 100% sure as to the scope of this apparent effect. I am relying on Card, Cross and Jones (12th Ed) ISBN 0-406-00086-7; I shall dig up the reference in a couple of minutes.James500 (talk) 18:35, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

What he says at paragraph 16.5 is this:

"... It follows from the above that the acceptance of any consideration for not reporting or prosecuting a non-arrestable offence is not an offence under s5(1), nor does it constitute any other offence. The same is true, with one exception, in the case of merely failing to inform the police of an arrestable offence. ...

"

The exception he mentions is misprision of treason.

This may well be the author's opinion and he doesn't mention any cases. I think the section is capable of supporting this interpretation for the reasons I explained on the talk page of compounding a felony... I shall go and have a look at Hammersley. James500 (talk) 19:15, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Hammersley was in 1958, so they could not have considered the effect of this section in that case. Halsbury agrees that the course of justice may be perverted by "discontinuing a criminal prosecution in return for payment" and mentions R v. Toney, R v. Ali [1993] 2 All ER 409 (to say that there was no distinction between bribery and pressure by bribery. In that case, one of the defendants plead guilty to a charge of "[He and three others] ... with intent to pervert the course of public justice, did a series of acts which had a tendency to pervert the course of public justice in that they conducted negotiations for [Him] to withdraw his complaint of assault in return for a sum of money, so that the charge of assault pending against [one of the others] would be withdrawn at Durham Magistrates Court" and gave evidence for the prosecution.

In that case, at the end (pg 416 para d) they say,

"There was some discussion at the hearing before use, at our instigation, whether what was offered could be regarded as the payment of reasonable compensation for the injury suffered by [this person] so as to bring the case within the exception set out in s 5(1) of the Criminal Law Act 1967. But the point was not raised below and is not the subject of any ground of appeal; nor did it prove possible to investigate the point at any length before us. So we say no more about it."

I really am not sure, without looking into the matter, which is why I did not mention this issue in the article.James500 (talk) 20:11, 2 December 2008 (UTC)


 * In that case maybe Hammersley is no longer good law on this point. It may be that Parliament intended that the exception in section 5(1) should apply to all offences, not just the statutory offence in that subsection. The trouble is, saying so will be original research, unless someone else has definitively said it. Richard75 (talk) 20:34, 2 December 2008 (UTC)