1920 AC 479 ,House of Lords
This Case-summary is written by Tejaswi Netam, LL.B. 2nd year studying at Campus Law Centre, Faculty of Law, University of Delhi during her Internship at LeDroit India.
Facts
Arthur Beard was drunk one day when he committed the offence of rape on a minor girl of mere 12-13 years of age. During the act, he tried to suppress the voice of the victim by putting her hands on her mouth and throat. It lead to her death due to lack of oxygen leading to suffocation.
Prosecution
When Charged with the offence of Murder, he put forward the defence of intoxication.
Courts viewed the defence of intoxication with suspicion because they feared that an accused could easily feign or counterfeit drunkenness. Others feared that, “There could rarely be a conviction for homicide if drunkenness avoided responsibility”. Jurists argued that a person should not escape the consequences of his crime by relying on his own vice and misconduct.These views seem to reflect more of an emotional condemnation of the drunkard rather than a reasoned analysis of its effect on the requisite mental element in a crime.
Course of trialhttps://indiankanoon.org/search/?formInput=criminal%20trial%20&pagenum=12
The jury found the accused guilty of murder during the trial and sentenced him to death. However, the appellate court allowed his appeal and applied the ratio in Rex v Meade (1909 1 K.B. 895), which states that a man may rebut the presumption of intending the natural consequences of his acts by showing that his mind was so affected by drink that he could not know his act was dangerous. Relying on this principle, the appellate court held that the accused could not have intended to commit murder and reduced his punishment to manslaughter (culpable homicide not amounting to murder).
Naturally, the crown again appealed to the house of lords for the correction.
Decision of the House of Lords
The Lord Chancellor, speaking for the bench, found the lower court’s relied-upon decision far too broad.
House of lords restored the conviction for murder following the reasoning that-
- “The evidence available didn’t proved incapacity in the accused to form the intent necessary to constitute the crime”
Because rape is a crime which cannot be committed unintentionally. Therefore the fact that the accused was committing rape is inconsistent with the argument of the accused that he was not capable of intent to constitute crime.
Simply put, when a person commits rape, he cannot claim that his intoxication prevented him from forming intent. If he can form the intent to commit rape, then he cannot escape liability for any other intent or knowledge involved.
“Merely showing that drink affected his mind so much that he more readily gave in to violent passion does not rebut the presumption that he intends the natural consequences of his acts.”
You can illustrate the presumption of natural consequences like this: When a person strikes someone fatally with an axe, he cannot claim surprise or argue that he thought nothing would happen. He knows that the blow will injure the person and may even kill him.
If someone proves that due to drunkenness, he followed his instinct, how can he be excused from the act?
Conclusion
For the above-mentioned reasons, beard had no defence to Rape. As the death occurred in furtherance of a felony, there was no need to show that beard intended to cause the death. Such killing is murder by the law of England.
Current applicability
Older jurists defended recognizing involuntary drunkenness as a complete defence because they believed accused persons could not abuse it the way they abused voluntary drunkenness.
In common law as well as the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita,2023(BNS){sec. 23} https://ledroitindia.in/punishment-under-bns-changes-that-may-brought-a-reform-in-society/The law allows the general exception of loss of judgment due to intoxication only when someone forces the person to consume the intoxicant against his will. For example, if a person gets drunk on his own, he cannot claim this defence. On the other hand if someone intoxicates other against their will (for example without their knowledge mixing something in their drink etc), and leads the so intoxicated person to somewhere to commit a crime, then this defence is available. The Burden of proof obviously lies on the person so claiming and the court would presume that such conditions weren’t there unless ofcourse rebutted.
Jerome Hall concludes that a person must essentially be bound and forced to drink the intoxicant before he can claim the defence of involuntary drunkenness.
- Hall, General Principles of Criminal Law, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis, BobbsMerrill, 1960), p. 530; 1st ed. 1947, p. 429.
