R v Latimer
Under the doctrine of transferred malice, a defendant who intends to harm one person but harms another instead is guilty of the same offence.
Facts
Mr Latimer quarrelled with a man in a pub and swung his belt at him. The belt glanced off the man and hit a woman standing nearby, seriously injuring her face. He was charged with unlawfully and maliciously wounding her under section 20 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861.
Legal principle
The court upheld his conviction. Lord Coleridge CJ said that if a person has an unlawful intention to harm one person, and in carrying out that intention he harms another, he is guilty of the offence against that other person. His malice towards the man was transferred to the woman, because the offence he intended and the offence he committed were of the same kind. This is the doctrine of transferred malice.
Related cases on mens rea
- Attorney General's Reference (No 3 of 1994) [1998] AC 245
- R v Caldwell [1982] AC 341
- R v Church [1966] 1 QB 59
- R v Cunningham [1957] 2 QB 396
- R v G [2003] UKHL 50, [2004] 1 AC 1034
- R v Hancock and Shankland [1986] AC 455
- R v Le Brun [1992] QB 61
- R v Matthews and Alleyne [2003] EWCA Crim 192, [2003] 2 Cr App R 30
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