Whelan v National City Bank Ltd ; Attorney General v Whelan

JurisdictionIreland
Judgment Date20 December 1934
Date20 December 1934
CourtCourt of Criminal Appeal (Irish Free State)
[C. C. A., I.F.S.]
Attorney-General
and
Whelan

Crime admitted - Crime alleged to have been committed under threats from armed thief - Defence of duress per minas - Whether amounting to a justification - Limits of such defence.

Threats of immediate death or serious personal violence so great as to overbear the ordinary power of human resistance should be accepted as a justification for acts which would otherwise be criminal. But the application of this general rule must be subject to certain...

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26 cases
  • Dunne v DPP
    • Ireland
    • Supreme Court
    • 11 May 2016
    ...Court of Criminal Appeal on duress 101 In its decision on the appeal, the Court referred to the decision in Attorney General v. Whelan [1934] I.R. 518, in which, in the course of a discussion about the general availability of duress as a defence the Court of Criminal Appeal had said: ?The a......
  • DPP v Gleeson
    • Ireland
    • Supreme Court
    • 1 November 2018
    ...that defence was pleaded, and he further stated that there had been no reported case on the matter in then recent years; AG v Whelan [1934] IR 518. Since then, the authorities, and resulting academic commentary, have burgeoned. Many of the relevant decisions and texts have been argued on th......
  • DPP for Northern Ireland v Lynch
    • United Kingdom
    • House of Lords
    • 12 March 1975
    ...expressions used it would not be appropriate to treat what was said as being a comprehensive statement of principle. 29 A.-G. v. Whelan [1934] I.R. 518 there was a charge of receiving goods knowing them to have been stolen. A special question was left to the jury as follows: — "In receivin......
  • R v Hasan (Aytach)
    • United Kingdom
    • House of Lords
    • 17 March 2005
    ...Nor is it now regarded as justifying the conduct of the defendant, as has in the past been suggested: Attorney-General v Whelan [1934] IR 518, 526; Glanville Williams, Criminal Law, The General Part (2nd ed, 1961), p 755. Duress is now properly to be regarded as a defence which, if establis......
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4 books & journal articles
  • Necessity as a Defence to Murder: An Anglo-Canadian Perspective
    • United Kingdom
    • Sage Journal of Criminal Law, The No. 78-4, August 2014
    • 1 August 2014
    ...primarily the values thatcompeting rights to life promote and it provides reasons to act to secure94 See Attorney-General vWhelan [1934] IR 518, Irish CCA, where Murnaghan J stated thatduress is a defence because ‘… threats of immediate death or serious personal violenceso great as to overb......
  • The Paradox of Disallowing Duress as a Defence to Murder
    • United Kingdom
    • Sage Journal of Criminal Law, The No. 78-1, February 2014
    • 1 February 2014
    ...653. This, however, was overruled by R v Howe [1987] 1 AC 417. In Ireland, duress remains a common law defence. Attorney-General v Whelan [1934] IR 518 conf‌irmed that duress is not available as a defence to the crime of murder. Ireland considered the defences of duress and necessity in the......
  • CONSIDERATIONS OF TIME AND SPACE IN DURESS
    • Singapore
    • Singapore Academy of Law Journal No. 2004, December 2004
    • 1 December 2004
    ...Criminal Law of Queensland (J Jerrard, B Butler & M Shanahan eds, Butterworths, 10th Ed, 1997), pp 110—111. 22 Attorney-General v Whelan [1934] IR 518 at 526 per Murnaghan J. See further, P Charleton, P McDermott & M Bolger, Criminal Law (Butterworths, 1999) pp 1087—1088. 23 Thomson v H M A......
  • The Contours of the Right to Self-Defence: Is the Requirement of Imminence Merely a Translator for the Concept of Necessity?
    • United Kingdom
    • Sage Journal of Criminal Law, The No. 72-2, April 2008
    • 1 April 2008
    ...Dressler, above n. 44 at 1337.56 E. Caird, The Critical Philosophy of Immanuel Kant, vol. 2 (James Maclehose & Sons:Glasgow, 1889) 319.57 [1934] IR 518 at 524.58 Blackstone, Commentaries IV 30, cited in Smith and Hogan, above n. 21 at 311.59 (1969) 53 Cr App R 569.60 [1975] AC 653.61 (1976)......

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