R v Steane

Facts

Steane was a British actor living in Germany when the Second World War began. He was arrested and threatened by the German authorities, who made it clear that he and his wife and children would be sent to a concentration camp unless he cooperated. He made broadcasts for German radio. He was charged under the Defence (General) Regulations 1939 with doing acts likely to assist the enemy with intent to assist the enemy.

History

He was convicted by a jury at trial and appealed to the Court of Criminal Appeal.

Issue

Whether the prosecution had proved the intent to assist the enemy required by the Regulations where the acts were done under threats to the defendant and his family, and what the relevance of motive was to proof of intention.

Held

Appeal allowed and conviction quashed. On the evidence the acts were as consistent with a purpose of protecting his family as with an intent to assist the enemy, so the necessary intent had not been proved.

Ratio

• Where an offence requires an intent to assist the enemy, the prosecution must prove that intent. Doing an act that in fact helps the enemy does not by itself prove the intent, and where the defendant acted to save himself or his family from threats, the evidence may leave open that he did not intend to assist.
• The presumption that a person intends the natural consequences of his acts is rebuttable. It does not relieve the prosecution of proving the intent, and the jury must decide whether it is satisfied on all the evidence, including the circumstances of compulsion, that the intent was present.

The judgments

Key reasoning

• The offence required a specific intent, so liability could not rest on proof only that the broadcasts were likely to help Germany.
• A purpose of saving oneself or the family of oneself and an intent to assist the enemy are different matters, and the former is evidence against the latter where the defendant did no more than he was forced to do.
• The jury had not been properly directed to consider whether the prosecution had excluded the possibility that the defendant acted only out of fear for his family.

Where it fits in the module

Within Basic Principles the case is the classic text for separating intention from motive and desire. The question for the module is whether the court was applying ordinary rules about proof of intent or was in effect allowing a defence of necessity or duress under another name. It should be read with the later House of Lords cases on intention (Moloney, Hancock and Shankland, Woollin), which treat intention as a matter of evidence from which the jury may find the result was virtually certain, and which have been taken to leave less room for the sort of reasoning used here.

Criticisms

• The decision blurs the line between intention and motive: an act done in the knowledge that it will help the enemy is arguably done with intent to help, even if the reason for doing it is sympathetic, and later cases on oblique intent make that harder to avoid.
• It has been argued that the court reached a result which really belonged to a defence of duress, and that dressing it as a failure of proof of mens rea distorts the burden of proof and the rules on when a defence is available.
• The reasoning is difficult to reconcile with later decisions that a person who acts under threat can still intend the result, so the case is best seen as turning on its particular wartime statute and facts.