Talk:Misprision of treason

Moved from misprision of felony
I have moved the following remark from misprision of felony because it does not belong there:

A related crime, misprision of treason, was frequently used in England during the 16th and 17th centuries to punish enemies of the Crown.

I think that this remark should receive some attention before it is included in the main article (if it should be included at all):

Treason, misprision of treason and contempt of the sovereign, etc. were used more frquently and in an oppressive manner in the past; but why single out those two centuries in particular (I presume that the answer to that question is Henry VIII and the Civil War; but it should be said explicitly)?; and why single out misprision of treason (was this particular offence used to "push the envelope", as oppossed to treason itself which certainly was, and if so, how exactly was that done?)? —Preceding unsigned comment added by James500 (talk • contribs) 09:19, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

United Kingdom: sentence for misprision
The expression 'at the discretion of the court' (see R v. Morris [1951] etc.) requires some explanation (preferably via a link to another article), but at the moment the article 'sentence (law)' does not explain the rules for sentencing common law offences, and there does not appear to be an article on criminal sentencing in the UK (or common law generally). —Preceding unsigned comment added by James500 (talk • contribs) 13:17, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

According to Halsbury's Laws of England (2006 reissue, Volume 11(1), Paragraph 365) misprision of treason is "punishable by fine and imprisonment at the discretion of the court". As I presume we all know that means that the court can impose any sentence which is not "inordinate". And that what is or is not "inordinate" is determined by the common law.

So, could I please have an explanation as to why this offence should be described as "punishable by imprisonment for life". James500 (talk) 02:10, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

There is nothing wrong with the phrase "at the discretion of the court," but you said in your first post above that it required explanation, so I thought "life imprisonment" was clearer. This is how it is described in Archbold at 18-38. There is no maximum sentence and life is one of the options available to the court. It may be taken as a given that a court will not necessarily (indeed, usually won't) impose the maximum sentence available to it, but it is usual to say what the maximum is. When one day there is an article on sentencing in England (or Scotland) we can link to it. Richard75 (talk) 22:59, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Note
Not everything in the old textbooks that have been recently linked to from this page is necessarily accurate. In his book, Professor Bellamy says that Lord Coke's etymology of 'misprision' is wrong and that he is wrong about the origins of the offence. James500 (talk) 06:29, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

External link
http://www.pepysdiary.com/archive/1662/12/11/ does not link to the quote about the Tonge case. Richard75 (talk) 20:29, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Scroll down to the bottom of the Pepys diary and you will come to the article about the Tonge plot. The article does not contain the quote, so I will make this clear by changing the link to "For more information about the Tonge plot read X". The quote is from the State Trials. James500 (talk) 22:50, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Both of these cases are available in Lexis if you want to check them.James500 (talk) 22:57, 13 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Richard75 (talk) 19:01, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Using the law as a source
I have added a clean-up tag that this article needs to cite non-primary sources to verify what the law says in different countries stems from the English law offence. The reason that non-primary sources need to be cited is that it is a form of editorializing for Wikipedia to claim that the law is about a particular offence corresponds to the topic of the article, when the law, itself, says it is part of a different one. In the New Zealand law that I tagged the offence is described as party to treason and is only one alternative element clause of what constitutes the New Zealand offence. Some evidence is needed to show that the wording of the New Zealand law can be traced back to the English common law offence. The sort of evidence I would expect might be commentary from the drafters of the codification of New Zealand law, the parliamentary debate that discusses this section of the law, or some sort of historical research about this law. Simply observing the words are the same, without citing a reason why, is insufficient to make the claim, and injects an editors opinion into the article, when the wording might be coincidence, and have no basis in fact. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 00:07, 25 April 2023 (UTC)