What does a
judge need to consider at trial if a defendant’s evidence is not accepted?
“The
case in which a defendant advances a defence which may well be disbelieved
imposes a particularly acute duty on the trial judge. It is essential that he
consider carefully what the position will be if the defendant's account is
indeed rejected. Sometimes the result will be that the only proper verdict will
be guilty, and indeed sometimes this may be expressly conceded on the
defendant's behalf. But very often it will be necessary for the jury to be
required to apply its mind to the remaining steps to conviction, and it is
especially important that it be reminded that it must do so because defence
counsel will normally not have addressed other possible obstacles to conviction
which are inconsistent with the case being advanced by the defendant in evidence.
A simple instance is the defendant accused of murder who advances an alibi
which is seriously damaged in cross examination of the several witnesses, but
whose actions, assuming that he was indeed the culprit, may not amount to
murder, for example because there is a genuine decision to be made about
intent. There are many other examples.”
Holt v Her Majesty’s Attorney General
on behalf of the Queen
(Isle of Man) [2014]
UKPC 4 (19 February 2014) at [24]. Compare Huynh v The Queen [2013] HCA 6 discussed here
on 15 March 2013 for situations where getting to the real issues in a
complex case is appropriate. And on considering defences not expressly relied
on, see R v Pickton 2010 SCC 32,
discussed here
on 6 August 2010.
Holt will be of interest to all lawyers who receive funds or
property from clients. A cynic might say that the creation of money laundering
and proceeds of crime offences gives the Crown an unfair advantage in the
scramble for revenue. But we who take a more balanced view would agree that it
would not be possible to prevent offenders from benefiting from their offences
if lawyers were exempt from proceeds of crime laws.
In Holt the key issue was whether the
defendant, a lawyer, had known or suspected that funds were the proceeds of
crime. This requirement of knowing or suspecting is commonly found in proceeds
of crime legislation.
“[25]
... It would not be necessary for the appellant to know that the law labelled
what occurred a crime, still less which crime, if she knew or suspected facts
which amounted to a crime of some kind. But it was necessary for the prosecution
to prove that she had applied her mind to the circumstances in which the money
had been produced. Actual knowledge or suspicion that there was criminal
conduct of some kind involved is an essential element of the offence. It was
not enough to show that she ought to have realised that some crime, such as
theft or obtaining by deception, might well have been involved. Knowledge or
suspicion that to receive the money ... would be irregular, in the sense of a
breach of trust, is not automatically the same as knowledge or suspicion that a
crime is involved.”
And in the
circumstances here, even agreeing in cross-examination that she knew the money
couldn’t have “honestly” been obtained by the client, did not necessarily
amount to admitting knowledge of more than an irregularity that was less than a
crime. The issue of knowledge or suspicion that the money was proceeds of crime had
not been left to the jury in this trial, the defence having been absence of
knowledge of the source of the money rather than its quality as proceeds of
crime.
“[26]
It is no answer to this defect [omission
of a direction on the need to prove knowledge or suspicion that the money was
proceeds of crime] that the appellant was not
advancing this defence, either in her evidence or in counsel's speech on her
behalf. It is precisely because she was advancing a different, and as the jury
found untruthful, version of events, that neither she nor counsel did so. It is
precisely in these circumstances that the duty falls upon the judge to address
the elements of the offence if, as can be seen to be at least possible, the
jury rejects her evidence.”
