Obstruction of the Police. This judgment ruled that silence or refusal to answer questions from the police could amount to obstruction, depending on the circumstances (despite the ruling in Rice v Connolly).
The reference to this case in the law journals (which you are supposed to quote in court) is 74 CrAppR 298, which you read out as, “Volume 74, Criminal Appeals Reports, page 298.”
The police were looking for a group of youths responsible for a serious assault. They approached Ricketts and Blake. The latter refused to give names or information and were abusive to the police. One of the police then took Blake’s arm, at which Blake punched him. Blake was arrested (for assault), and Ricketts intervened to prevent his arrest: he was then himself arrested and charged with obstruction.
The case against Blake was thrown out by the Sheffield magistrates (because they ruled that the policeman was wrong to take his arm before arresting him, so that Blake was technically acting in self-defence to an assault by the police). But Ricketts was convicted of obstruction. He appealed by ‘case stated’ (i.e. on a matter of law) to the Divisional Court, but lost his appeal. This is the judgment of the Divisional Court in rejecting his appeal.
The judgment spends most of its time rehearsing the facts of the case (as found by the magistrates), particularly emphasising the “hostile and obstructive attitude” and threats of Ricketts (and Blake) at the time of their arrest.
The defence case was that, according to Rice v Connolly, Ricketts had a “lawful excuse” for his obstruction because he was merely staying silent and not answering questions from the police, which he had a right to do. But the judgment rejects this, referring to the comment by Justice James in that case.[note] The conclusion is that, in this particular case, Ricketts’ silence did amount to an obstruction. The reason for this conclusion is not spelt out very explicitly—here is the (whole of) the relevant bit of the judgment:
The present case, therefore, raises the point that was reserved by James J and, in my judgment, these matters have got to be approached in a realistic manner, bearing in mind the difficulties for all concerned in these cases. There can be no possible shadow of a doubt that this Defendant obstructed the police officers as much as he possibly could on that occasion. The only question, therefore, is whether, in Lord Parker’s words “they had a lawful excuse for so acting.” In my judgment, having regard to the justices’ findings of fact in this case, they did not have such lawful excuse, and in my judgment the defendant was properly convicted of wilful obstruction of a constable in the execution of his duty. (Ormrod, LJ, at page 301–302)
If the prosecution try to use this case to argue that, despite Rice v Connolly, you can be convicted of obstruction for remaining silent (or for not doing something that you have a legal right not to do), you should point out the crucial bit of that last paragraph: “having regard to the justices’ findings of fact in this case.” I.E. the judgment depended on the facts of that particular case. They are summarised earlier on in the judgment, particularly:
This is the crucial finding: [quoting the magistrates] “In our view, the totality of their behaviour and attitude at this stage amounted to an obstruction of the police officers in the execution of their duties and either or both the defendants could then have been charged with obstruction of the police in the execution of their duty.” (Ormrod, LJ, at page 301)
The point is that it was not just Ricketts’ silence or refusal to answer questions that amounted to the obstruction, but the combination of that with his general attitude and abuse of the police officers.
© Copyright 2001, Andrew Gray
What, “copyright”! Isn’t copyright evil? [ You better read these notes]
This briefing was written by me (with or without help from others) for Trident Ploughshares, but may be used freely and copied/distributed by others. In order to guarantee this freedom, the briefing is copyrighted and licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License (formal license statement follows).
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled “GNU Free Documentation License.”
I am not a lawyer. The briefing is not guaranteed in any way, and is not a substitute for proper legal advice. Feedback and corrections are very welcome, phone 0845 4588 368, email andrew@andrewgray.uklinux.net.
Andrew Gray, TP legal support (England & Wales)
This briefing was last revised: 11/12/2001
(See the changelog and authorship page for revision details.)