People v Lillis

• Jurisdiction: Ireland
• Judgment Date: 01 January 1958
• Date: 01 January 1958
• Court: Court of Appeal (Ireland)

C.C.A.

The People (Attorney General)

and

Lillis

Guilty knowledge supervening on innocent receiving -Judge's charge - Jury adequately instructed to convict only if satisfied of guilty knowledge at time of receipt of goods - Suggested once only to jury that they could convict if satisfied that "while it was in his possession he had guilty knowledge" - Whether such suggestion sufficient to amount to a misdirection - Explanation of his possession of the goods given by the accuse - Jury directed that they should convict if satisfied that such explanation was a fabrication - Whether such direction amounted to misdirection.

On a charge of receiving a motor oar well knowing it to be stolen, the trial Judge at one point in his summing up said the jury were entitled to convict if they were satisfied that "while it was in his possession he had guilty knowledge."He had made it plain more than once earlier in his charge that the guilty knowledge essential to ground a conviction must have existed at the time that the car was actually received by the accused. Held by the Court of Criminal Appeal that, as in the light of the charge as a whole, the phrase could not reasonably convey to the jury that it was sufficient for the prosecution to prove that the accused became aware that the car had been stolen after he had first received it honestly, the conviction should not be quashed for misdirection. R. v. TennetUNK [1939] 1 All E.R. 86 distinguished. The trial Judge also told the...