Commissioner of Police v Caldwell [1982] UKHL 1

House of Lords

Between

Commissioner of PoliceAppellant

CaldwellRespondent

It is Ordered and Adjudged, by the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in the Court of Parliament of Her Majesty the Queen assembled, That the said Order of Her Majesty's Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) of the 31st day of March 1980 complained of in the said Appeal be, and the same is hereby, Affirmed and that the said Petition and Appeal be, and the same is hereby, dismissed this House: And it is further Ordered, That the questions certified in the said Order of the Court of Appeal be answered as follows:

If the charge of an offence under section 1(2) of the Criminal Damage Act 1971 is framed so as to charge the defendant only with " intending by the destruction or damage" [of the property] " to endanger the life of another ". evidence of self-induced intoxication can be relevant to his defence.

If the charge is, or includes, a reference to his " being reckless as to whether the life of another would thereby be endangered ", evidence of self- induced intoxication is not relevant :

And it is also further Ordered, That the Costs incurred by the Appellant in the courts below and in this House be paid out of Central Funds pursuant to section 10 of the Costs in Criminal Cases Act 1973, the amount of such last-mentioned Costs to be certified by the Clerk of the Parliaments.

HOUSE OF LORDS

COMMISSIONER OF POLICE FOR THE METROPOLIS

(APPELLANT)

CALDWELL (RESPONDENT)

(on Appeal from the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division))

Lord Wilberforce Lord Diplock Lord Edmund-Davies Lord Keith of Kinkel Lord Roskill

Lord Wilberforce

My Lords,

I would dismiss the appeal and answer the certified questions as suggested by my noble and learned friend, Lord Edmund-Davies.

Lord Diplock

My Lords,

The facts that gave rise to this appeal are simple. The respondent had been doing work for the proprietor of a residential hotel. He considered that he had a grievance against the proprietor. One night he got very drunk and in the early hours of the morning he decided to revenge himself on the proprietor by setting fire to the hotel, in which some ten guests were living at the time. He broke a window and succeeded in starting a fire in a ground floor room; but fortunately it was discovered and the flames were extinguished before any serious damage was caused. At his trial he said that he was so drunk at the time that the thought that there might be people in the hotel whose lives might be endangered if it were set on fire had never crossed his mind.

He was indicted at the Central Criminal Court upon two counts of arson under section 1, subsections (1) and (2) respectively, of the Criminal Damage Act 1971. That section reads as follows:

" 1.—(1) A person who without lawful excuse destroys or damages " any property belonging to another intending to destroy or damage " any such property or being reckless as to whether any such property " would be destroyed or damaged shall be guilty of an offence.

" (2) A person who without lawful excuse destroys or damages any " property, whether belonging to himself or another ....

" (a) intending to destroy or damage any property or being reckless " as to whether any property would be destroyed or damaged; and

" (b) intending by the destruction or damage to endanger the life " of another or being reckless as to whether the life of another " would be thereby endangered;

" shall be guilty of an offence.

" (3) An offence committed under this section by destroying or " damaging property by fire shall be charged as arson."

Count 1 contained the charge of the more serious offence under section 1(2) which requires intent to endanger the life of another or recklessness as to whether the life of another would be endangered. To this count the respondent pleaded not guilty. He relied upon his self-induced drunkenness as a defence, on the ground that the offence under subsection (2) was one of " specific intent" in the sense in which that expression was used in speeches in this House in Reg. v. Majewski

[1977] AC 443

. Count 2 contained the lesser offence under section 1(1) to which the respondent pleaded guilty.

The learned recorder directed the jury that self-induced drunkenness was not a defence to count 1, and the jury convicted him on this count. The

recorder sentenced him to three years imprisonment on count 1 but passed no sentence on count 2, the lesser offence, to which he had pleaded guilty. On appeal the Court of Appeal held that her direction to the jury as to the effect of self-induced drunkenness on the charge in count 1 was wrong. They set aside the conviction on that count; but left the sentence of three years imprisonment unchanged as they considered it to be an appropriate sentence on count 2. So it was only a pyrrhic victory for the respondent; but it left the law on criminal damage and drunkenness in a state of some confusion.

The question of law certified for the opinion of this House was:

" Whether evidence of self-induced intoxication can be relevant to " the following questions— " (a) Whether the defendant intended to endanger the life of another;

" and

" (b) Whether the defendant was reckless as to whether the life of " another would be endangered, within the meaning of Section " 1(2) (b) of the Criminal Damage Act 1971 ".

The question recognises that under section 1 (2) (b) there are two alternative states of mind as respects endangering the life of another, and that the existence of either of them on the part of the accused is sufficient to constitute the mens rea needed to convert the lesser offence under section 1(1) into the graver offence under section 1(2). One is intention that a particular thing should happen in consequence of the actus reus, viz. , that the life of another person should be endangered, (this was not relied on by the prosecution in the instant case). The other is recklessness as to whether that particular thing should happen or not. The same dichotomy of mentes reae, intention and recklessness, is to be found throughout the section; in subsection (1) and paragraph (a) of subsection (2) as well as in paragraph (b); and " reckless " as descriptive of a state of mind must be given the same meaning in each of them.

My Lords,

the Criminal Damage Act 1971 replaced almost in their entirety the many and detailed provisions of the Malicious Damage Act 1861. Its purpose, as stated in its long title was to revise the law of England and Wales as to offences of damage to property. As the brevity of the Act suggests, it must have been hoped that it would also simplify the law.

In the Act of 1861, the word consistently used to describe the mem rea that was a necessary element in the multifarious offences that the Act created was " maliciously " —a technical expression, not readily intelligible to juries, which became the subject of considerable judicial exegesis. This culminated in a judgment of the Court of Criminal Appeal in Reg. v. Cunningham [1957] 2 Q.B. 396 which approved, as an accurate statement of the law, what had been said by Professor Kenny in the first edition of his Outlines of Criminal Law published in 1902:

" In any statutory definition of a crime, malice must be taken ... as " requiring either (1) an actual intention to do the particular kind of " harm that in fact was done; or (2) recklessness as to whether such " harm should occur or not (i.e., the accused has foreseen that the " particular kind of harm might be done and yet has gone on to take " the risk of it)."

My Lords,

in this passage Professor Kenny was engaged in defining for the benefit of students the meaning of " malice " as a term of art in criminal law. To do so he used ordinary English words in their popular meaning. Among the words he used was " recklessness ", the noun derived from the adjective " reckless ", of which the popular or dictionary meaning is: careless, regardless, or heedless, of the possible harmful consequences of one's acts. It presupposes that if thought were given to the matter by the doer before the act was done, it would have been apparent to him that there was a real risk of its having the relevant harmful consequences; but, granted this, recklessness covers a whole range of states of mind from failing to give

any thought at all to whether or not there is any risk of those harmful consequences, to recognising the existence of the risk and nevertheless deciding to ignore it. Conscious of this imprecision in the popular meaning of recklessness as descriptive of a state of mind, Professor Kenny, in the passage quoted, was, as it seems to me, at pains to indicate by the words in brackets the particular species within the genus: reckless states of mind, that constituted " malice " in criminal law. This parenthetical restriction on the natural meaning of recklessness was necessary to an explanation of the meaning of the adverb " maliciously " when used as a term of art in the description of an offence under the Malicious Damage Act 1861 (which was the matter in point in Reg. v. Cunningham); but it was not directed to and consequently has no bearing on the meaning of the adjective " reckless " in section 1 of the Criminal Damage Act 1971. To use it for that purpose can, in my view, only be misleading.

My Lords,

the restricted meaning that the Court of Appeal in Reg. v. Cunningham had placed upon the adverb "maliciously" in the Malicious Damage Act 1861 in cases where the prosecution did not rely upon an actual intention of the accused to cause the damage that was in fact done, called for a meticulous analysis by the jury of the thoughts that passed through the mind of the accused at or before the time he did the act that caused the damage, in order to see on which side of a narrow dividing line they fell. If it had crossed his mind that there was a risk that someone's property might be damaged but, because his mind was affected by rage or excitement or confused by drink, he did not appreciate the seriousness of the risk or trusted that good luck would prevent its happening, this state of mind would amount to malice in the restricted meaning placed upon that term by the Court of Appeal; whereas if, for any of these reasons, he did not even trouble to give his mind to the question whether there was any risk of damaging the property, this state of mind would not suffice to make him guilty of an offence under the Malicious Damage Act 1861.

Neither state of mind seems to me to be less blameworthy than the other; but if the difference between the two constituted the distinction between what does and what does not in legal theory amount to a guilty state of mind for the purposes of a statutory offence of damage to property, it would not be a practicable distinction for use in a trial by jury. The only person who knows what the accused's mental processes were is the accused himself—and probably not even he can recall them accurately when the rage or excitement under which he acted has passed, or he has sobered up if he were under the influence of drink at the relevant time. If the accused gives evidence that because of his rage, excitement or drunkenness the risk of particular harmful consequences of his acts simply did not occur to him, a jury would find it hard to be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that his true mental process was not that, but was the slightly different mental process required if one applies the restricted meaning of " being reckless as to " whether " something would happen, adopted by the Court of Appeal in Reg. v. Cunningham.

My Lords,

I can see no reason why Parliament when it decided to revise the law as to offences of damage to property should go out of its way to perpetuate fine and impracticable distinctions such as these, between one mental state and another. One would think that the sooner they were got rid of, the better.

When cases under section 1(1) of the new Act, in which the prosecution's case was based upon the accused having been " reckless as to whether . . . " property would be destroyed or damaged ", first came before the Court of Appeal, the question as to the meaning of the expression " reckless " in the context of that subsection appears to have been treated as soluble simply by posing and answering what had by then, unfortunately, become an obsessive question among English lawyers. Is the test of recklessness " subjective " or " objective "? The first two reported cases, in both of which judgments were given off the cuff, are first Reg. v. Briggs which is reported in a footnote to the second, Reg, v. Parker (Daryl) [1977] 1 W.LR. 600. Both classified the test of recklessness as " subjective ". This led the

court in Briggs to say:

" A man is reckless in the sense required when he " carries out a deliberate act knowing that there is some risk of damage " resulting from that act but nevertheless continues in the performance of " that act."

This leaves over the question whether the risk of damage may not be so slight that even the most prudent of men would feel justified in taking it, but it excludes that kind of recklessness that consists of acting without giving any thought at all to whether or not there is any risk of harmful consequences of one's act; even though the risk is great and would be obvious if any thought were given to the matter by the doer of the act. Parker, however, opened the door a chink by adding as an alternative to the actual knowledge of the accused that there is some risk of damage resulting from his act and his going on to take it, a mental state described as " closing his mind to the obvious fact " that there is such a risk.

Reg. v. Stephenson [1979] 1 Q.B. 695, the first case in which there was full argument, though only on one side, and a reserved judgment, slammed the door again upon any less restricted interpretation of " reckless " as to whether particular consequences will occur than that originally approved in Briggs. The appellant, a tramp, intending to pass the night in a hollow in the side of a haystack, had lit a fire to keep himself warm; as a result of this the stack itself caught fire. At his trial, he was not himself called as a witness but a psychiatrist gave evidence on his behalf that he was schizophrenic and might not have had the same ability to foresee or appreciate risk as a mentally normal person. The judge had given to the jury the direction on the meaning of reckless that had been approved in Parker. The argument for the appellant on the appeal was that this let in an " objective " test whereas the test should be entirely " subjective". It was buttressed by copious citation from previous judgments in civil and criminal cases where the expressions " reckless " or " recklessness " had been used by judges in various contexts. Counsel for the Crown expressed his agreement with the submissions for the appellant. The judgment of the court contains an analysis of a number of the cited cases, mainly in the field of civil law. These cases do not disclose a uniform judicial use of the terms; and as respects judicial statements made before the current vogue for classifying all tests of legal liability as either " objective " or " subjective " they are not easily assignable to one of those categories rather than the other. The court, however, reached its final conclusion by a different route. It made the assumption that although Parliament in replacing the Act of 1861 by the Act of 1971 had discarded the word "maliciously" as descriptive of the mens rea of the offences of which the actus reus is damaging property, in favour of the more explicit phrase " intending to destroy or damage any " such property or being reckless as to whether any such property would be " destroyed", it nevertheless intended the words to be interpreted in precisely the same sense as that in which the single adverb " maliciously " had been construed by Professor Kenny in the passage that received the subsequent approval of the Court of Appeal in Reg. v. Cunningham.

My Lords,

I see no warrant for making any such assumption in an Act whose declared purpose is to revise the then existing law as to offences of damage to property, not to perpetuate it. " Reckless " as used in the new statutory definition of the mens rea of these offences is an ordinary English word. It had not by 1971 become a term of legal art with some more limited esoteric meaning than that which it bore in ordinary speech—a meaning which surely includes not only deciding to ignore a risk of harmful consequences resulting from one's acts that one has recognised as existing, but also failing to give any thought to whether or not there is any such risk in circumstances where, if any thought were given to the matter, it would be obvious that there was.

If one is attaching labels, the latter state of mind is neither more nor less "subjective" than the first. But the label solves nothing. It is a statement of the obvious; mens rea is, by definition, a state of mind of the accused himself at the time he did the physical act that constitutes the actus reus of the offence; it cannot be the mental state of some non-existent, hypothetical person.

Nevertheless, to decide whether someone has been "reckless" as to whether harmful consequences of a particular kind will result from his act, as distinguished from his actually intending such harmful consequences to follow, does call for some consideration of how the mind of the ordinary prudent individual would have reacted to a similar situation. If there were nothing in the circumstances that ought to have drawn the attention of an ordinary prudent individual to the possibility of that kind of harmful consequence, the accused would not be described as "reckless" in the natural meaning of that word for failing to address his mind to the possibility; nor, if the risk of the harmful consequences was so slight that the ordinary prudent individual upon due consideration of the risk would not be deterred from treating it as negligible, could the accused be described as " reckless " in its ordinary sense if, having considered the risk, he decided to ignore it. (In this connection the gravity of the possible harmful consequences would be an important factor. To endanger life must be one of the most grave.) So to this extent, even if one ascribes to " reckless " only the restricted meaning, adopted by the Court of Appeal in Stephenson and Briggs, of foreseeing that a particular kind of harm might happen and yet going on to take the risk of it, it involves a test that would be described in part as " objective" in current legal jargon. Questions of criminal liability are seldom solved by simply asking whether the test is subjective or objective.

In my opinion, a person charged with an offence under section 1(1) of the Criminal Damage Act 1971 is "reckless as to whether or not any property "would be destroyed or damaged" if(1) he does an act which in fact creates an obvious risk that property will be destroyed or damaged and

(2) when he does the act he either has not given any thought to the possibility of there being any such risk or has recognised that there was some risk involved and has nonetheless gone on to do it. That would be a proper direction to the jury; cases in the Court of Appeal which held otherwise should be regarded as overruled.

Where the charge is under section 1(2) the question of the state of mind of the accused must be approached in stages, corresponding to paragraphs (a) and (b). The jury must be satisfied that what the accused did amounted to an offence under section 1(1), either because he actually intended to destroy or damage the property or because he was reckless (in the sense that I have described) as to whether it might be destroyed or damaged. Only if they are so satisfied must the jury go on to consider whether the accused also either actually intended that the destruction or damage of the property should endanger someone's life or was reckless (in a similar sense) as to whether a human life might be endangered.

Turning now to the instant case, the first stage was eliminated by the respondent's plea of guilty to the charge under section 1(1). Furthermore he himself gave evidence that his actual intention was to damage the hotel in order to revenge himself on the proprietor. As respects the charge under section 1(2) the prosecution did not rely upon an actual intent of the respondent to endanger the lives of the residents but relied upon his having been reckless whether the lives of any of them would be endangered. His act of setting fire to it was one which the jury were entitled to think created an obvious risk that the lives of the residents would be endangered; and the only defence with which your Lordships are concerned is that the respondent had made himself so drunk as to render him oblivious of that risk. If the only mental state capable of constituting the necessary mens rea for an offence under section 1(2) were that expressed in the words " intending by the destruction or damage to endanger the life of another ", it would have been necessary to consider whether the offence was to be classified as one of " specific " intent for the purposes of the rule of law which this House affirmed and applied in Regina v. Majewski; and this it plainly is. But this is not, in my view, a relevant inquiry where " being " reckless as to whether the life of another would be thereby endangered " is an alternative mental state that is capable of constituting the necessary mens rea of the offence with which he is charged.

The speech of the Lord Chancellor in Majewski

[1977] AC 443

at 475, with which Lord Simon of Glaisdale, Lord Kilbrandon and I agreed, is authority that self-induced intoxication is no defence to a crime in which recklessness is enough to constitute the necessary mens rea. The charge in Majewski was of assault occasioning actual bodily harm and it was held by the majority of the House, approving Reg v. Venna [1976] 1 Q.B. 421 at 428, that recklessness in the use of force was sufficient to satisfy the mental element in the offence of assault. Reducing oneself by drink or drugs to a condition in which the restraints of reason and conscience are cast off was held to be a reckless course of conduct and an integral part of the crime. The Lord Chancellor accepted as correctly stating English law the provision in section 208 of the American Model Penal Code:

" When recklessness establishes an element of the offence, if the " actor, due to self-induced intoxication, is unaware of a risk of which " he would have been aware had he been sober, such unawareness is " immaterial ".

So, in the instant case, the fact that the respondent was unaware of the risk of endangering the lives of residents in the hotel owing to his self-induced intoxication, would be no defence if that risk would have been obvious to him had he been sober.

My Lords,

the Court of Appeal in the instant case regarded the case as turning upon whether the offence under section 1 (2) was one of " specific " intent or " basic" intent. Following a recent decision of the Court of Appeal by which they were bound, Reg. v. Orpin

(1980) 70 Cr. App. R. 306

, they held that the offence under section I (2) was one of " specific " intent in contrast to the offence under section 1(1) which was of basic intent. This would be right if the only mens rea capable of constituting the offence were an actual intention to endanger the life of another. For the reasons I have given, however, classification into offences of " specific " and " basic " intent is irrelevant where being reckless as to whether a particular harmful consequence will result from one's act is a sufficient alternative mens rea.

My Lords,

the learned recorder's summing-up was not a model of clarity. Contrary to the view of the Court of Appeal she was right in telling the jury that in deciding whether the respondent was reckless as to whether the lives of residents in the hotel would be endangered, the fact that, because of his drunkenness, he failed to give any thought to that risk was irrelevant; but there were other criticisms of the summing-up made by the Court of Appeal which your Lordships very properly have not been invited to consider, since it makes no practical difference to the respondent whether the appeal is allowed or not. Since it is not worth while spending time on going into these criticisms, I would dismiss the appeal.

I would give the following answers to the certified questions:

If the charge of an offence under section 1(2) of the Criminal Damage Act 1971 is framed so as to charge the defendant only with " intending by the destruction or damage " [of the property] " to " endanger the life of another ", evidence of self-induced intoxication can be relevant to his defence.

If the charge is, or includes, a reference to his " being reckless as " to whether the life of another would thereby be endangered ", evidence of self-induced intoxication is not relevant.

Lord Edmund-Davies MY LORDS,

I respectfully concur in holding that this appeal must be dismissed. I nevertheless consider that one of the certified questions should be answered in a manner contrary to that favoured by a majority of your Lordships. And I believe that the reason for my arriving at a different conclusion is of some importance and that it should be explored.

We are concerned with a charge of arson in contravention of section 1(2) of the Criminal Damage Act 1971, which needs to be seen in its statutory setting. Section 1 is in the following terms:-

" (1) A person who without lawful excuse destroys or damages any " property belonging to another intending to destroy or damage any " such property or being reckless as to whether any such property would " be destroyed or damaged shall be guilty of an offence.

" (2) A person who without lawful excuse destroys or damages any " property, whether belonging to himself or another— " (a) intending to destroy or damage any property or being reckless " as to whether any property would be destroyed or damaged; "and

" (b) intending by the destruction or damage to endanger the life of " another or being reckless as to whether the life of another would " be thereby endangered;

" shall be guilty of an offence

" (3) An offence committed under this section by destroying or " damaging property by fire shall be charged as arson."

In considering the section, there are two matters of particular importance:(1) What constitutes " recklessness " in the criminal law?

(2) What is the mens rea of the offence commonly (and understandably) known as " aggravated arson " in section 1(2) (b) ? I turn to these questions forthwith:

(1) Recklessness

The words " intention " and " recklessness " have increasingly displaced in statutory crimes the word " maliciously, " which has frequently given rise to difficulty in interpretation. In Cunningham [1957] 2 Q.B. 396, Byrne J. in the Court of Criminal Appeal cited with approval the following passage which has appeared in Kenny's Outline of Criminal Law from its first edition in 1902 onwards:

" In any statutory definition of a crime, malice must be taken not " in the old, vague sense of wickedness in general, but as requiring " either(1) an actual intention to do the particular kind of harm that " in fact was done; or

(2) recklessness as to whether such harm should " occur or not (i.e. the accused has foreseen that the particular kind " of harm might be done and yet has gone on to take the risk of it). It " is neither limited to nor does it indeed require any ill will towards the " person injured ".

Byrne J.'s comment was laconic and unqualified:

"We think that this is " an accurate statement of the law ... in our opinion the word "

' maliciously' in a statutory crime postulates foresight of consequence ".

My Lords,

my noble and learned friend, Lord Diplock, somewhat dismissively describes Professor Kenny as having been " engaged in defining " for the benefit of students the meaning of ' malice' as a term of art in " criminal law ", adding:

" To do so he used ordinary English words in their popular meaning. " Among the words he used was ' recklessness', the noun derived from " the adjective ' reckless', of which the popular or dictionary meaning " is: careless, regardless, or heedless, of the possible harmful " consequences of one's acts. It presupposes that if thought were given " to the matter by the doer before the act was done, it would have been " apparent to him that there was a real risk of its having the relevant " harmful consequences . . . The parenthetical restriction on the " natural meaning of recklessness was necessary to an explanation of the " meaning of the adverb ' maliciously' when used as a term of art in " the description of an offence under the Malicious Damage Act 1861 " (which was the matter in point in Reg. v. Cunningham); but it was " not directed to and consequently has no bearing on the meaning of " the adjective ' reckless' in section 1 of the Criminal Damage Act " 1971." (Emphasis added).

I have to say that I am in respectful, but profound, disagreement. The law in action compiles its own dictionary. In time, what was originally the common coinage of speech acquires a different value in the pocket of the lawyer than when in the layman's purse. Professor Kenny used lawyers' words in a lawyer's sense to express his distillation of an important part of the established law relating to mens rea, and he did so in a manner accurate not only in respect of the law as it stood in 1902 but also as it has been applied in countless cases ever since, both in the United Kingdom and in other countries where the common law prevails; see, for example in Western Australia, Lederer v. Hutchins, [1961] W.A.R.99, and, in the United States of America, Jethro Brown's " General Principles of Criminal "Law", 2nd Edition, 1960, 115. And it is well known that the Criminal Damage Act 1971 was in the main the work of the Law Commission, who, in their Working Paper No. 31 (issued in 1970), defined recklessness by saying:

" A person is reckless if, (a) knowing that there is a risk that an " event may result from his conduct or that a circumstances may " exist, he takes that risk, and (b) it is unreasonable for him to take " it, having regard to the degree and nature of the risk which he knows " to be present."

It was surely with this contemporaneous definition and the much respected decision of Cunningham (1957) in mind that the draftsman proceeded to his task of drafting the Criminal Damage Act 1971.

It has therefore to be said that, unlike negligence, which has to be judged objectively, recklessness involves foresight of consequences, combined with an objective judgment of the reasonableness of the risk taken. And recklessness in vacuo is an incomprehensible notion. It must relate to foresight of risk of the particular kind relevant to the charge preferred, which, for the purpose of section 1(2), is the risk of endangering life and nothing other than that.

So if a defendant says of a particular risk, " It never crossed my mind ", a jury could not on those words alone properly convict him of recklessness simply because they considered that the risk ought to have crossed his mind, though his words might well lead to a finding of negligence. But a defendant's admission that he " closed his mind " to a particular risk could prove fatal, for " A person cannot, in any intelligible meaning of the words, " close his mind to a risk unless he first realises that there is a risk; and if " he realises that there is a risk, that is the end of the matter." (Glanville Williams, Textbook of Criminal Law, p.79).

In the absence of exculpatory factors, the defendant's state of mind is therefore all-important where recklessness is an element in the offence charged, and section 8 of the Criminal

Justice Act 1967 has laid down that:

" A court or jury, in determining whether a person has committed an " offence,—

" (a) shall not be bound in law to infer that he intended or foresaw " a result of his actions by reason only of its being a natural and " probable consequence of those actions; but

" (b) shall decide whether he did intend or foresee that result by " reference to all the evidence, drawing such inferences from the " evidence as appear proper in the circumstances ".

My Lords,

it is unnecessary to examine at length the proposition that ascertainment of the state of mind known as " recklessness " is a subjective exercise, for the task was expansively performed by Geoffrey Lane L.J. (as he then was) in Stephenson [1977] 1 Q.B. 495. And, indeed, that was the view expressed by the learned recorder herself in the instant case when, citing Briggs [1977] 1 All E.R. 475, at 477, she directed the jury at one stage in these terms:

"... It may be the most useful function that I can perform if I " read to you the most recent (I hope) definition of ' recklessness' . . . " by a superior court . . .

" 'A man is reckless when he carries out a deliberate act, knowing " 'that there is some risk of damage resulting from that act, but " 'nevertheless continues in the performance of that act' ... That " came, in fact, in a case of straight arson and damage to property, " but in this case you would probably feel that you had to add after " the words to fit this section of the Act,' some risk of damage to life', " ... because that is what we are concerned with. I see both counsel " nod assent to that. So, we can stay on common ground . . . ."

(2) The ' mens rea ' of aggravated arson

The first count charged the respondent with " Arson contrary to Section " 1(2) and (3) of the Criminal Damage Act 1971 ", and the particulars of the offence were in the following terms:

"James Caldwell on the 23rd day of December 1978 without lawful " excuse you damaged by fire a window frame and curtains at the Hydro " Hotel . . . belonging to another intending to damage the said property " or being reckless as to whether any such property would be damaged " and intending by the said damage to endanger the life of another or " being reckless as to whether the life of another would be thereby " endangered."

My Lords,

the very layout of section 1 makes clear that a state of mind over and beyond that essential for a conviction under section 1(1) has to be established before the graver crime created by section 1(2) can be brought home. The latter has features both of an offence against property and an offence against the person, and a special " intent" or a special " recklessness " is involved, a state of mind " ulterior " to the " basic " intent or recklessness which is sufficient for section 1(1). And "intention" and "recklessness" are more than birds of a feather; they are blood-brothers; so much so that Austin included " recklessness" within the term "intention". (Jurisprudence", 4th Edition, Volume 1, pp.436, 441, 442). As James L.J. said in Reg. v. Venna [19761 Q.B. 421, at 429C, " In many cases the dividing " line between intention and recklessness is barely distinguishable ". So in O'Driscoll

(1977) 65 Cr. App. R. 50

, where the charge was one of manslaughter caused by setting fire to a house, Waller L.J., giving the judgment of the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) said (at p.55):

". . . We are of the opinion in this case that the unlawful act relied " on by the learned judge of damaging the building of another by fire " involved a basic intent .... It would have been different in our " view if the intent had involved the question of danger to the life of " others, as in subsection (2) of section 1 of the Criminal Damage Act " 1971, because that would not be inherent in the actus reus if there " was an intention to endanger the life of another of recklessness as " to whether the life of another would be endangered or not. As I " have already stated, in our view this was a crime of basic intent . . . " and therefore the defence of drunkenness does not avail at all: see " D.P.P. v. Majewski

[1977] AC 443

And in Stephenson (ante), to which I have already referred, where the charge was laid under section 1(1), Geoffrey Lane L.J. said (at page 704 B):

" There is no doubt that the subjective definition of ' recklessness' " does produce difficulties. One of them, which is particularly likely to " occur in practice, is the case of the person who by self-induced " intoxication by drink or drugs deprives himself of the ability to " foresee the risks involved in his actions. Assuming that by reason " of his intoxication he is not proved to have foreseen the relevant " risk, can he be said to have been ' reckless'? Plainly not, unless " cases of self-induced intoxication are an exception to the general " rule. In our judgment the decision of the House of Lords in Reg. v. " Majewski

[1977] AC 443

makes it clear that they are such an " exception. Evidence of self-induced intoxication such as to negative " mens rea is a defence to a charge which requires proof of a ' specific

" ' intent', but not to a charge of any other crime. The Criminal "Damage Act 1971, section 1(1) involves no specific intent: see Reg.

" v. O'Driscoll . . . Accordingly, it is no defence under the Act of " 1977 for a person to say that he was deprived by self-induced " intoxication of the ability to foresee or appreciate an obvious risk ".

That Geoffrey Lane L.J. was referring in his final sentence only to section 1(1) of the Act is made clear by its context, and in Orpin

(1980) 70 Cr. App. R. 306

, at 312 Eveleigh L.J. said:

" The mental element (intention or recklessness) in the second part of " section 1 (2) is an aggravating circumstance which adds to the gravity " of the actus reus which is defined in the first part of that subsection. " Although the proof of that additional element will often involve " evidence as to possible or actual danger to life, the additional " aggravating factor lies in the mind. It is the mental attitude to the " consequences of an actus reus. It goes beyond the actus reus itself, " and is therefore to be treated as a specific intent which has to be " established as an ingredient of the offence. That being so, evidence " of intoxication is relevant as one of those matters to be taken into " consideration whether or not the necessary mental element existed.

" There is nothing inconsistent in treating an offence under Section " 1(1) as a crime of basic intent and an offence under Section 1(2) as " one of specific intent. It is only the second part of Section 1 (2) which " introduces a specific intent. The same words are used to denote the " attitude of mind, but in the one case there is an act stipulated " corresponding to the mental state and manifesting its existence, whilst " in the other there is no such act ".

But the trial judge here unfortunately failed to differentiate between the different types of arson embraced by section 1 of the 1921 Act by directing the jury without qualification that " Arson is an offence of basic intent". This led her, in purported pursuance of Majewski, to conclude that—

" It is no defence for the accused, by reason of self-induced " intoxication, to say that he was senseless and so had neither ' intent' " nor ' recklessness' with regard to what he was doing . . . One basic, " simple act of setting fire to the curtains, with a view to igniting the " building, is what is relied upon for the commission of the offence . . . " If a person . . . sets out with intent to set fire to something, that " is a positive, basic act, and he has with him the equipment to do it, " he cannot then be allowed to say, ' Well, yes, I meant to set fire to " ' that, but that's all' ".

In my judgment, the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) were right in holding that this direction contained two errors. In the first place, despite her earlier, correct directions as to the subjective nature of the " recklessness " test, the learned recorder invited the jury to hold recklessness established if they considered that it was "... a fair likelihood that, ... if the wind " was in the right direction, perhaps, to fan the flames rather than peter " them out, it might have got a good hold of the furniture in the room . . ." That was undoubtedly a direction that the " recklessness " of the accused's action was to be judged objectively. And the second error lay in directing the jury without qualification that(a) all arson is an offence of basic intent and, consequently, that

(b) since Majewski

[1977] AC 443

it matters not if, by reason of the defendant's self-intoxication, he may not have foreseen the possibility that his admittedly unlawful actions endangered life.

Something more must be said about (b), having regard to the view expressed by my noble and learned friend, Lord Diplock, that the speech of the Lord Chancellor in Majewski " is authority that self-induced intoxication " is no defence to a crime in which recklessness is enough to constitute the " necessary mens rea ". It is a view which, with respect, I do not share. In common with all noble and learned Lords hearing that appeal, Lord Elwyn-Jones L.C. adopted the well-established (though not universally favoured) distinction between basic and specific intents. Majewski related solely to charges of assault, undoubtedly an offence of basic intent, and the Lord Chancellor made it clear that his observations were confined to offences of that nature; see pp.473 B.C. and G.H., 474H-475E, and 476 A.D. My

respectful view is that Majewski accordingly supplies no support for the proposition that, in relation to crimes of specific intent (such as section 1(2) (b) of the 1971 Act) incapacity to appreciate the degree and nature of the risk created by his action which is attributable to the defendant's self-intoxication is an irrelevance. The Lord Chancellor was dealing simply with crimes of basic intent, and in my judgment it was strictly within that framework that he adopted the view expressed in the American Penal Code quoted at p.475D, and recklessness as an element in crimes of specific intent was, I am convinced, never within his contemplation.

For the foregoing reasons, the Court of Appeal were in my judgment right in quashing the conviction under section 1(2) (b) and substituting a finding of guilty of arson contrary to section 1(1) and (3) of the 1971 Act. It follows, therefore, that I agree with learned counsel for the respondent that the certified point of law should be answered in the following manner:

Yes, evidence of self-induced intoxication can be relevant both to(a) whether the defendant intended to endanger the life of another, and to

(b) whether the defendant was reckless as to whether the life of another would be endangered, within the meaning of Section l(2) (b) of the Criminal Damage Act 1971.

My Lords,

it was recently predicted that, " There can hardly be any doubt " that all crimes of recklessness except murder will now be held to be crimes " of basic intent within Majewski " (Glanville Williams, " Textbook of " Criminal Law", 1978, page 431). That prophecy has been promptly fulfilled by the majority of your Lordships, for, with the progressive displacement of " maliciously " by " intentionally or recklessly " in statutory crimes, that will surely be the effect of the majority decision in this appeal. That I regret, for the consequence is that, however grave the crime charged, if recklessness can constitute its mens rea the fact that it was committed in drink can afford no defence. It is a very long time since we had so harsh a law in this country. Having revealed in Majewski (page 495B-497C) my personal conviction that, on grounds of public policy, a plea of drunkenness cannot exculpate crimes of basic intent and so exercise unlimited sway in the criminal law, I am nevertheless unable to concur that your Lordships' decision should now become the law of the land. For, as Eveleigh L.J. said in Orpin (ante, at page 312):

"... there is nothing inconsistent in treating intoxication as " irrelevant when considering the liability of a person who has " willed himself to do that which the law forbids (for example, to do " something which wounds another), and yet to make it relevant when a " further mental state is postulated as an aggravating circumstance " making the offence even more serious ".

By way of a postscript I would add that the majority view demonstrates yet again the folly of totally ignoring the recommendations of the Butler Committee (Report on Mentally Abnormal Offenders. Cmnd 6244, 1975, paragraphs 18, 53-58).

My Lords,

I would dismiss the appeal.

Lord Keith of Kinkel

My Lords,

I am in entire agreement with the reasoning contained in the speech of my noble and learned friend, Lord Diplock, which I have had the benefit of reading in draft. I would answer the certified questions in the manner which he proposes, and dismiss the appeal.

Lord Roskill

My Lords,

I had prepared an opinion of my own in this appeal but having had the advantage of reading in draft the speech of my noble and learned friend, Lord Diplock, I am satisfied that no useful purpose would be served by delivering that speech. I agree in every respect with what my noble and learned friend has said in his speech and with his proposed answers to the questions certified. For the reasons he gives I agree that this appeal should be dismissed.

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