{"id":33,"date":"2003-12-06T21:36:40","date_gmt":"2003-12-06T21:36:40","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2003-12-06T21:36:40","modified_gmt":"2003-12-06T21:36:40","slug":"criminal-damage-revisited-r-v-kelleher-2003-ca","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/?p=33","title":{"rendered":"Criminal damage revisited, R v Kelleher [2003] CA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font style=\"BACKGROUND-COLOR: #f0f0f0\"><strong>[Criminal damage &#8211; lawful excuse &#8211; judge must not direct a jury to convict]<br \/><\/strong><\/font>D&nbsp;entered an art gallery and decapitated a statue of Baroness Thatcher in protest at her policies which&nbsp;he foresaw were leading the world towards its eventual destruction.&nbsp; The judge directed the jury to convict because of none of the evidence was disputed and the statutory defence did not engage with D. <\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p><strong>Held<\/strong>:&nbsp;A judge is never entitled to direct a jury to return a verdict of guilty.&nbsp;&nbsp;A defence of lawful excuse was only available where, whatever the defendant&#8217;s state of mind, the defendant&#8217;s act had been in order to protect his own property or right or interest, or that of anyone else.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>The Court&nbsp;examined, once again, the breadth of the defence of &#8220;lawful excuse&#8221; to a charge of criminal damage.&nbsp;They considered the following cases <em>R v Heyes <\/em>[1950]&nbsp;and<i>&nbsp;R v Hickey&nbsp;<\/i>(unreported 30 July 1997). They applied <i>DPP v Stonehouse <\/i>[1977], <i>R v Gent <\/i>[1990] and<i> R v Davis <\/i>[2000]. They doubted <em>R v Hill <\/em>(1989).<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>The evidence was overwhelming in any event, so the the conviction was safe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Criminal damage &#8211; lawful excuse &#8211; judge must not direct a jury to convict]D&nbsp;entered an art gallery and decapitated a statue of Baroness Thatcher in protest at her policies which&nbsp;he foresaw were leading the world towards its eventual destruction.&nbsp; The judge directed the jury to convict because of none of the evidence was disputed and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}