Liability for Encouraging One's Own Murder, Victims, and Other Exempt Parties

Abstract:     
This paper considers three major issues in the law of complicity: (1) the role of oblique intention in complicity; (2) complicity liability for those who engage in mutual gun- fights in public streets; and (3) the scope of the ‘exempt party’ rule. All of these issues arose in R v Gnango, but unfortunately the UK Supreme Court’s treatment of those issues was wholly unsatisfactory. Nonetheless, that decision provides us with a perfect backdrop for exploring these issues. I aim to demonstrate that the Lords got the law wrong. I will put forward an alternative interpretation of the law. I rely extensively on American law, but I am not aiming to carry out a full comparative study. Instead, the aim is to shed light on how the law might be reformed, interpreted and developed in the UK. The American case law is useful for highlighting some of the legal misconceptions drawn by the Lords in R v Gnango.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 29

Accepted Paper Series