LECTURE HANDOUT: PARTICIPATION LECTURE 1: INTRODUCTION A. Criminal liability in multi-party settings Take the following case: A and B beat up V together. B pins V's body against the wall while A pushes his fist into V's face, causing some bruising. They do so because earlier that day, C promised them good money for beating up V, against whom C has a grudge. They knew where to find V because one of their friends, F, whom they had told that they were looking for V, phoned A to tell him that V was down at the pub, where F had just arrived as well. You already have the legal tools available to analyse A's liability. Clearly, by hitting V on the nose with his fist, A has committed battery. The actus reus of battery is the infliction of violence upon another person, the mens rea is to do so with intent or recklessly. Here, A has inflicted violence upon V's body with intent. Depending on whether A's blow with his fist caused any bruising, A may also have committed the more serious offence of assault occasioning actual bodily harm (s 47 OAPA 1861) against V. You will also be hopeful about your ability to analyse B's liability. Like A, B has committed battery. By pinning V to the wall, B has clearly also inflicted violence upon V, again with intent to do so. But you may be less certain about whether B has also committed an assault occasioning actual bodily harm. The bruising to V's face, after all, was not directly caused by B pinning V to the wall but by A pushing his fist into V's face. So you may need further arguments to hold B liable for an assault occasioning actual bodily harm, too. What about C? Can we analyse C's conduct as constituting a battery? It seems not. He hasn't laid a finger on V. To hold C criminally liable for what happened to V, we need some more legal tools. The offence of battery on its own is not going to do the trick. The same is true for F. We certainly cannot say straightforwardly that F committed a battery of V, since he didn't use any violence against V. The law of secondary liability (for which equivalent terms are: secondary participation, accessorial liability, or complicity) was developed to solve these difficulties. B. Who are the parties to a crime? Primary parties = aka principals - are those participants who satisfy all the definitional elements of the crime.
The secondary parties = parties =/= principals. AKA accessories or (less frequently) accomplices. Someone who is not a principal can be held responsible for the commission of the principal's crime. C. Who is a Principal? . The person who satisfies all the definitional elements of an offence is referred to as the "principal" or "perpetrator" (these terms are used interchangeably). English law uses the notion of "joint principals" or "co-perpetrators" very sparingly: a) In respect of those who