My leisure interests

Martial arts Heritage railways Garden railways Motorcycles DIY

Downloads

Linux downloads Windows downloads Java downloads Perl downloads Home automation downloads

About me

Home & family My CV

Site info

Contact the author Download policy Keyword index

R v Spratt (1990)

Last modified: Thu Feb 23 16:37:37 2006

This case ([1990] 1 W.L.R. 1073) demonstrates that while recklnessness can be the mens rea for a charge under s.47 of the OffencesAgainstThePersonAct1861, the defendant must be shown to have known that his act carried some risk. The `Caldwell' type recklessness, where the risk should have been obvious to a reasonable person, will not do.

Spratt fired an air pistol through the window of his flat intending `to see how far the pellets would go'. Instead, two pellets hit a girl playing in the forecourt, causing a degree of injury. Spratt was charged with assault occasioning ABH (s.47 of the OffencesAgainstThePersonAct1861 and pleaded `guilty of recklessness' (rather than, presumably, of intention to cause the injury). Accepting this plea, the trial judge gave the impression that Spratt had pleaded guilty to the offence charged. However, on appeal he claimed that since he did not know there were children playing nearby, he could not have been reckless in the sense required for the offense, and that therefore he had been convicted under a guilty plea of an offence to which he did not, technically, plead guilty. The Court of Appeal allowed this appeal, and did not substitute an alternative offence.

CaseLaw

Law glossary index

Shameless plug

By the author of this site. Buy on-line from Amazon USA | UK

Editorial

So you want to be a university lecturer? Read this first! Speak like your boss: new developments in managerese

Computing features

File handling in the Linux kernel: an in-depth look at how Linux handles files, filesystems, and file I/O All sorts of Linux stuff Confused about CLASSPATH? answers are here First steps in EJB using jBoss (recently revised for jBoss 3.2)