Jack Taylor was charged with aggravated vehicle-taking after a scooter rider was killed in a collision with a truck which the Crown said he had taken without consent. The Crown accepted that a jury could not be sure of any fault in the way he drove. The Supreme Court held that the offence is not made out in those circumstances: an accident is not “owing to the driving” merely because the unlawfully taken vehicle was at the scene.
The collision and the charge
The prosecution alleged that Taylor took the truck without the owner’s permission. A scooter rider died in a collision with it. The prosecution accepted that it could not prove Taylor was at fault in the way he drove.
Law Teacher writing support
Writing a law essay?
We choose a writer who is an expert in your area of law and qualified to at least the academic level you select. Most of our writers hold a master’s degree or PhD, have teaching experience, or both.
Send us your question and, if you wish, any marking criteria. We’ll write an essay to your instructions.
The disputed charge was aggravated vehicle-taking under section 12A of the Theft Act 1968.
How the question reached the Supreme Court
Of the five counts on the indictment, two mattered on this appeal. Count 3 charged aggravated vehicle-taking. Count 4 charged Taylor and Marriott with causing death by driving while uninsured, contrary to section 3ZB of the Road Traffic Act 1988.
On 31 July 2013, in R v Hughes, the Supreme Court held that section 3ZB requires some element of fault in the defendant’s control of the vehicle, contributing in more than a minimal way to the death. When the case came before the Recorder of Exeter, His Honour Judge Gilbert QC, on 13 January 2014, the Crown accepted that there was no fault in the manner of Taylor’s driving and offered no evidence on Count 4. A not guilty verdict was directed on that count.
The trial judge concluded that Hughes also applied to the aggravated vehicle-taking count. The Court of Appeal took a different view, and the certified question reached the Supreme Court.
The statutory offence
Section 12 creates the basic offence of taking a conveyance without authority.
Section 12A, inserted by the Aggravated Vehicle Taking Act 1992, applies where that basic offence is committed in relation to a mechanically propelled vehicle and it is proved that, after the unlawful taking and before recovery, the vehicle was driven, or injury or damage was caused, in one of four circumstances. Those circumstances are dangerous driving; an accident owing to the driving by which any person is injured; an accident owing to the driving by which property other than the vehicle is damaged; and damage to the vehicle itself. The relevant limb was section 12A(2)(b), the injury limb.
The Crown’s contention was that the only fault required under section 12A(2)(b) was the unauthorised taking. Nothing further had to be proved about how the accident happened.
Marsh, and the decision in Hughes
In Marsh the Court of Appeal had treated the fact that the vehicle was involved in an accident as sufficient. The question in Taylor was whether that interpretation survived Hughes.
The Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeal in Hughes. The defendant there had been driving faultlessly when another driver, overtired and under the influence of heroin, veered across the road and was killed in the collision. Lord Hughes and Lord Toulson held that the statutory words required an effective cause, not merely that the car’s presence on the road was a precondition of the accident. By any common-sense test, the death was brought about by the other driver’s dangerous driving. Without a requirement of effective causation, the offence would extend to a death resulting from the victim’s own deliberate act. The wrong of driving uninsured could not supply the mental element of an offence whose essence was causing death. Given the gravity of homicide and the possible penalties, Parliament would have to speak unequivocally if it intended liability where the defendant had not caused the death.
The Crown invited the Court to depart from Hughes. Lord Sumption found no justification for doing so.
Why Hughes could not be distinguished
Hughes had concerned a different offence. It had expressly left the interpretation of section 12A open.
Those differences did not meet the essential point. Both “caused the death of another person by driving” and “owing to the driving of the vehicle, an accident occurred by which injury was caused” require a direct causal connection between the driving and the injury. If that connection were satisfied merely because the taking explained why the vehicle was where the accident happened, the consequences which the court had regarded as extraordinary in Hughes would apply equally here. The defendant could be convicted, and liable to a long sentence, for an aggravating factor for which he bore no responsibility.
Why the aggravating circumstance is not one of strict liability
Lord Sumption said that this was the fundamental reason the appeal had to succeed, and that he would have reached the same conclusion even if the language could have been distinguished or Hughes departed from. The Crown was asking the court to impose strict liability for the factors which turn the basic offence into the aggravated one, when neither the purpose nor the language of the Act required that.
The ordinary starting point is that criminal fault is required. A court must decide whether the legislature displaced that principle for the particular element of the offence.
Section 12A does impose strict liability in one respect, and the language makes that plain. The offence may be committed not only by the driver but by anyone who was party to the basic offence and was in or in the immediate vicinity when the dangerous driving, injury or damage occurred. Lord Sumption treated that as a rational response to the mischief. A person who has taken a vehicle without authority is treated as having control of it afterwards, and as able to take steps to see that it is driven safely, for so long as he remains present.
The unlawful taking explained why the truck was on the road. It did not establish that the manner in which the truck was driven contributed to the collision.
Alcohol and the test to be applied
On the admitted absence of fault, the driving did not cause Mr Davidson-Hackett’s death. The Crown argued in the alternative that the excess alcohol was enough fault to leave to a jury, because a sober Taylor would not have been driving and the accident would not have happened. Lord Sumption rejected that argument. The relevant fault is fault in the driving, of a kind which connects the driving with the accident. The alcohol established the separate summary offence under section 5(1)(a) of the Road Traffic Act 1988, but on the agreed facts it had nothing to do with the accident.
The required fault need not amount to careless driving. An act or omission in controlling the vehicle must contribute more than minimally to the death.
Verdict: Taylor’s appeal was unanimously allowed. The Court answered the certified question in the negative. Mere involvement of the truck in a fatal collision could not establish the aggravating element under section 12A(2)(b).
