Stephenson, R. v

Facts

Stephenson was a vagrant who sheltered in a hollow in a haystack and lit a fire to keep warm. The fire spread and the haystack was largely destroyed. He was suffering from schizophrenia, and there was medical evidence that his condition might have prevented him from appreciating the risk that the stack would burn.

History

Stephenson was convicted of arson, in effect criminal damage by fire contrary to section 1 of the Criminal Damage Act 1971, after a trial at which the jury was not directed that his own state of mind was relevant to whether he was reckless. He appealed to the Court of Appeal.

Issue

Whether recklessness under the Criminal Damage Act 1971 is to be judged by what the defendant himself foresaw, or by what an ordinary prudent person would have realised, and whether the jury should have been so directed in light of his mental illness.

Held

The appeal was allowed and the conviction quashed. Recklessness requires that the defendant himself appreciated the risk and went on to take it, or closed his mind to it, so that the jury should have been asked what the defendant himself foresaw.

Ratio

• Recklessness for the purposes of criminal damage is subjective: a defendant is reckless if he is aware of a risk of damage and nevertheless goes on to take it, or deliberately closes his mind to an obvious risk, and the question is what was in his own mind.
• Evidence that mental illness may have prevented the defendant from appreciating the risk is relevant to recklessness and must be left to the jury under a direction focused on his own state of mind.

The judgments

Key reasoning

• The word reckless in the Criminal Damage Act 1971 is to be given its ordinary legal meaning, which requires a conscious taking of an unjustified risk.
• A test based on what a reasonable person would have foreseen would make the defendant liable for a failure to think rather than for a guilty mind, which is inconsistent with the structure of mens rea offences.
• Because medical evidence suggested that Stephenson might not have appreciated the risk, the misdirection was material and the conviction unsafe.

Where it fits in the module

Stephenson belongs to the basic principles of criminal law because it fixes the meaning of recklessness as a form of mens rea. It supports the argument that criminal liability should rest on the defendant's own culpable awareness, and it provides the baseline against which the later objective Caldwell approach and its repudiation in R v G are best understood. It also shows how mental illness that falls short of insanity can still bear directly on the mental element.

Criticisms

• A purely subjective test lets a defendant escape liability because of an idiosyncratic or irrational failure to see an obvious risk, which some argue undermines the protection of property.
• The court did not fully resolve how far deliberately closing the mind to a risk differs from simply failing to consider it, leaving room for the objective gloss that Caldwell later adopted.
• Allowing evidence of mental illness to negate recklessness sits awkwardly with the separate regime for insanity, which treats such conditions through a special verdict rather than through the general rules of mens rea.