Obstruction of the Police. These cases all relate to intention and motivation for the alleged obstruction. They are only summarised very briefly here. They are Willmott v Attack, Hills v Ellis and Lewis v Cox.
When quoting these cases in court, you should use the law journal references given, not just the name of the case. You can just read out the reference as given, or spell it out and expand the abbreviations to law journals (QB etc): QB is “Queen’s Bench,” AllER is “All England Reports” and CrAppR is “Criminal Appeal Reports.” The year is given in square brackets, any other number before the journal name is a volume number, and the number following is the page number, so [1976] 3 AllER 794 is “1976 volume 3, All England Reports, page 794.” All three of these cases happen to be reported in more than one journal: you can just quote one reference or both of them if you want to show off.
The law journal reference for this case is [1977] QB 498 or [1976] 3 AllER 794.
The police were chasing a car which drove into a car park of a private club. The driver got out and resisted arrest. Willmott was the proprietor of the club and knew the driver. He came out and attempted to intervene in the arrest, saying that the police were on private property and had no rights. Eventually, the driver walked with the police to the police car but refused to get in. Willmott intervened again, this time trying to persuade the driver to get into the car. In the process, Willmott pushed between the police and the driver, and the driver got away.
The court had found that Willmott was trying to help the police, but that his bungled attempt to help them (by persuading the driver to cooperate with the police) had led to them being obstructed. But because his intention was not to cause an obstruction, his appeal against the original conviction was upheld.
. . . there must be something in the nature of a criminal intent of the kind which means that it is done with the idea of some form of hostility to the police with the intention of seeing that what is done is to obstruct, and that it is not enough merely to show that he intended to do what he did and that it did in fact have the result of the police being obstructed. (Croom-Johnson, J, at p.505A in [1977] QB)
The law journal reference for this case is [1983] QB 680 or 76 CrAppR 217.
Hills saw a fight and then say the police arresting the person whom he thought was the innocent party in the fight. He therefore intervened to stop the arrest, and was himself arrested and convicted of obstruction.
The court ruled that motive (as opposed to intention: the defence had used the phrase “hostility to the police” from Willmott v Attack to argue that he should not be found guilty) was irrelevant in determining whether he was guilty. Even if he had a good reason for trying to prevent the arrest, if he intended to prevent it, and the arrest was lawful, then he was guilty. So his appeal was dismissed.
. . . motive and emotion are alike irrelevant in criminal law. What matters is intention, that is, what state of affairs the defendant intended to bring about. (McCullough, J, p.686A–B in [1983] QB)
The law journal reference for this case is [1985] QB 509 or 80 CrAppR 1.
Cox was with his friend, when his friend was arrested for being drunk and disorderly and was put in a police van. Cox opened the door of the van to ask his friend where he was being taken. He did this twice, the second time when the police were about to drive off: that time, he was arrested for obstruction.
He was acquitted by the magistrates on the grounds that his actions were not “aimed at the police” (a phrase taken from the Hills v Ellis case). But the police appealed, and their appeal was upheld (so that the judges ordered the trial to resume and Cox to be convicted). He was guilty because he knew that the police would be obstructed by his opening of the van door the second time (because he knew that they would not be able to drive off with the door open), and therefore his obstruction was intentional. It did not matter that obstructing the police was not his primary intention in opening the door.
. . . the defendant, when he opened the door on the second occasion, intended to make it more difficult for the police to carry out their duties, even though that was not his predominate intention, and they [the magistrates] ought, therefore, to have convicted him of the charge against him. (??? at ???)
© 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).
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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: 27/06/2001
(See the changelog and authorship page for revision details.)