R v Looseley; Attorney General's Reference (No 3 of 2000)
Entrapment is not a defence, but a court may stay a prosecution where state agents have lured a person into committing a crime he would not otherwise have committed.
Facts
In two appeals heard together, undercover police officers had bought drugs from the defendants. In Looseley, an officer had approached the defendant, who supplied him with heroin, after the defendant had been named as a supplier. In the Attorney General's Reference, undercover officers had offered the defendant, who had no previous convictions for drug dealing, cheap contraband cigarettes and had pressed him to supply them with heroin, which he eventually did.
Legal principle
The House of Lords held that, although entrapment is not a defence, a court may stay a prosecution as an abuse of process, or exclude evidence under section 78 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, where the conduct of the police has been such as to bring the administration of justice into disrepute. Lord Nicholls said that the police may provide an unexceptional opportunity to commit a crime, behaving as an ordinary customer would, but must not incite or instigate a crime that would not otherwise have been committed. In Looseley the police had simply provided an opportunity, so the prosecution could proceed, but in the Attorney General's Reference the police had gone too far, so the stay was justified.
Related cases on criminal justice, evidence and appeals
- Connelly v Director of Public Prosecutions [1964] AC 1254
- Murray v United Kingdom (1996) 22 EHRR 29
- R (Adams) v Secretary of State for Justice [2011] UKSC 18, [2012] 1 AC 48
- R (Hallam) v Secretary of State for Justice [2019] UKSC 2, [2020] AC 279
- R v Cooper [1969] 1 QB 267
- R v Cowan [1996] QB 373
- R v Davis [2008] UKHL 36, [2008] 1 AC 1128
- R v Dunlop [2006] EWCA Crim 1354, [2007] 1 WLR 1657
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