R v Pembliton
Malice cannot be transferred from one kind of offence to a different kind of offence.
Facts
Mr Pembliton was fighting with a group of people outside a pub. He threw a stone at them, but missed and broke a window of the pub. He was charged with maliciously damaging property under the Malicious Damage Act 1861. The jury found that he intended to hit the people, not the window.
Legal principle
The court quashed his conviction. Lord Coleridge CJ said that the Act required an intention to injure property, and that an intention to injure a person could not be transferred to the offence of damaging property. Transferred malice applies only where the defendant intended to commit the same type of offence as the one actually committed, against a different victim. The case is usually contrasted with R v Latimer.
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 Latimer (1886) 17 QBD 359
- R v Le Brun [1992] QB 61
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