R v Nedrick [1986] EWCA Crim 2

R v Nedrick [1986] EWCA Crim 2; [1986] 1 WLR 1025

Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) — murder, foresight and inferred intention.

Facts

The prosecution alleged that Nedrick bore a grudge against Viola Foreshaw and threatened to burn her out of her home. In the early hours of 15 July 1984, he poured paraffin through the letterbox and onto the front door, then set it alight without warning the occupants. Her 12-year-old son died from asphyxiation and burns.

The police evidence was that Nedrick eventually admitted starting the fire but said his purpose was to frighten Foreshaw, not to kill anyone. At trial, however, he denied both starting the fire and making the admissions. The jury rejected that defence and convicted him of murder.

The problem with the jury direction

The trial judge told the jury that the prosecution could prove murder by establishing an intention to kill or cause serious injury. He then supplied an alternative: Nedrick would also be guilty if, when setting the fire, he knew serious bodily injury to someone inside was highly probable, even though he did not desire that result.

The effective ground of appeal concerned that alternative direction. It treated foresight of a highly probable consequence as sufficient in itself to establish the mental element of murder.

Foresight as evidence of intention

The Court of Appeal considered the House of Lords’ decisions in R v Moloney [1985] AC 905 and R v Hancock and Shankland. The trial judge’s direction predated publication of those speeches and followed the then-current textbook guidance. The appellate court nevertheless held the direction wrong.

The jury’s task was to decide whether the defendant intended to kill or cause serious bodily harm, taking account of all the circumstances. Foresight of consequences was evidence bearing on that question; it was not a separate legal substitute for intention.

The court also distinguished intention from desire or motive. A person might intend a consequence without wanting it for its own sake. Conversely, proof that someone deliberately performed a dangerous act did not automatically prove that they intended every consequence they foresaw.

The virtual-certainty guidance

For most cases, a straightforward direction about intending death or serious bodily harm would suffice. More detailed guidance could be needed where a dangerous act caused death but the defendant’s primary purpose might have been something else.

In those cases, the jury could consider both the probability of the consequence and whether the defendant foresaw it. The court explained that the jury should not infer the necessary intention unless sure of two matters: death or serious bodily harm was virtually certain to follow, apart from an unforeseen intervention, and the defendant appreciated that virtual certainty.

This was more demanding than the trial judge’s reference to a highly probable result. It also included the defendant’s own appreciation, rather than merely what a reasonable person would have foreseen.

The court left the ultimate inference to the jury on all the evidence. Appreciation of a practically inevitable consequence could make the inference compelling, even without a desire to cause it, but the judgment did not direct an automatic equation of foresight with intention.

Outcome

The Court of Appeal substituted a manslaughter verdict for the murder conviction and imposed 15 years’ imprisonment. It made that order on 20 May 1986 and gave its reasons on 10 July 1986.

Nedrick therefore succeeded in challenging the murder conviction, but was not acquitted of responsibility for the death. The judgment’s central contribution was its guidance on when a jury could infer the intention required for murder from foresight of consequences.

Judgment: R v Nedrick [1986] EWCA Crim 2.