Background
George Pappajohn put his house up for sale through a real-estate company. He met with a female real-estate agent from the company at a bar. They had lunch together, including drinks, over the course of approximately three hours, after which the two went to Pappajohn's house where they engaged in sexual intercourse.
The agent claimed that she was raped. However, Pappajohn claims that short of a few coy objections she had consented. After the event the woman was seen running out the house naked, wearing a bow-tie, with her hands bound, and was in great distress.
During the trial the issue arose of whether the defence of mistake of fact should be put to the jury. Namely, whether Pappajohn should be able to claim that he mistakenly believed that she had consented. The trial judge refused to allow the defence and Pappajohn was convicted.
Opinion of the Court
The majority opinion was written by Justice McIntyre. He first discussed the question of when a defence should be put to a jury. He held that a defence should be used when there is "some evidence which would convey a sense of reality in the submission." On the facts, he found that there was no evidence, other than the statement of the accused, that if believed, would have allowed for the possibility of consent. Accordingly, the lower court ruling was upheld.
Justice Dickson took a different approach to the defence of mistake of fact. He stated that the defence was derived from the mens rea requirement, which is a subjective standard, and consequently the mistaken belief did not need to be reasonable.
Mens rea is the mental element of a person's intention to commit a crime; or knowledge that one's action or lack of action would cause a crime to be committed. It is a necessary element of many crimes.
R v Park [1995] 2 S.C.R. 836, is a Supreme Court of Canada case dealing with the mistaken belief defence – i.e. that the accused had an honest but mistaken belief that he had consent to engage in sexual relations with the complainant – and the role of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in relation to sexual assault.
Battered woman syndrome (BWS) emerged in the 1990s from several murder cases in England in which women had killed violent partners in response to what they claimed was cumulative abuse, rather than in response to a single provocative act. Feminist groups, particularly Southall Black Sisters and Justice for Women, challenged the legal definition of provocation, and in a series of appeals against murder convictions secured the courts' recognition of battered woman syndrome. An early work describing the syndrome is Lenore E. Walker's The Battered Woman (1979).
Reasonable doubt is a term used in jurisdiction of common law countries. Evidence that is beyond reasonable doubt is the standard of evidence required to validate a criminal conviction in most adversarial legal systems.
R v Sault Ste-Marie [1978] 2 SCR 1299 is a Supreme Court of Canada case where the Court defines the three types of offences that exist in Canadian criminal law and further defines the justification for "public welfare" offences.
A mistake of fact may sometimes mean that, while a person has committed the physical element of an offence, because they were labouring under a mistake of fact, they never formed the required mens rea, and so will escape liability for offences that require mens rea. This is unlike a mistake of law, which is not usually a defense; law enforcement may or may not take for granted that individuals know what the law is.
R v Sansregret [1985] 1 S.C.R. 570 is a leading Supreme Court of Canada case on the requirements and defence for the criminal charge of rape.
Section 11 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is the section of the Canadian Constitution that protects a person's legal rights in criminal and penal matters. This includes both criminal as well as regulatory offences, as it provides rights for those accused by the state for public offences. There are nine enumerated rights protected in section 11.
Cheek v. United States, 498 U.S. 192 (1991), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court reversed the conviction of John L. Cheek, a tax protester, for willful failure to file tax returns and tax evasion. The Court held that an actual good-faith belief that one is not violating the tax law, based on a misunderstanding caused by the complexity of the tax law, negates willfulness, even if that belief is irrational or unreasonable. The Court also ruled that an actual belief that the tax law is invalid or unconstitutional is not a good faith belief based on a misunderstanding caused by the complexity of the tax law, and is not a defense.
The criminal law of Canada is under the exclusive legislative jurisdiction of the Parliament of Canada. The power to enact criminal law is derived from section 91(27) of the Constitution Act, 1867. Most criminal laws have been codified in the Criminal Code, as well as the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, Youth Criminal Justice Act and several other peripheral statutes.
Self-defence is a legal doctrine which says that a person may use reasonable force in the defence of one's self or another. This defence arises both from common law and the Criminal Law Act 1967. Self-defence is a justification rather than an excuse, saying that a person's actions were not a crime at all.
In the criminal law of Australia, self-defence is a legal defence to a charge of causing injury or death in defence of the person or, to a limited extent, property, or a partial defence to murder if the degree of force used was excessive.
R v Tutton, [1989] 1 S.C.R. 1392 was a decision of the Supreme Court of Canada on the mens rea requirements for criminal offences related to manslaughter. The Court was split three to three over whether two parents, believing that their diabetic child was cured by God, are guilty of manslaughter for intentionally failing to give the child his insulin.
R v Davidson, also known as the Menhennitt ruling, was a significant ruling delivered in the Supreme Court of Victoria on 26 May 1969. It concerned the legality of abortion in the Australian state of Victoria. The ruling was not the end of the case, but rather answered certain questions of law about the admissibility of evidence, so as to allow the trial to proceed.
R v Ewanchuk, [1999] 1 SCR 330 is a leading Supreme Court of Canada case concerning the defence of consent to a charge of sexual assault. The Court held that there was no defence of implied consent. The case is also notable for the controversy that arose between Justice John McClung and Justice Claire L'Heureux-Dubé.
Azoulay v R, [1952] 2 S.C.R. 495 was a decision by the Supreme Court of Canada on abortion in Canada. The Court found that with evidence so complicated, a judge should summarize it to a jury.
R v W (D), [1991] 1 S.C.R. 742 is a leading decision of the Supreme Court of Canada on assessing guilt based on the credibility of witnesses in a criminal trial. More specifically, W.D. examines sexual assault cases and burdens of proof in evidence law.
Necessitas non habet legem; "Necessity knows no law." This well-known maxim reflects the theoretical basis of the defence of necessity: that in dire circumstances of looming peril, the claims of positive law seems to weaken. Canadian criminal law allows for a common law defence of necessity. This controversial common law or judge-made defence has only been firmly recognized in Canadian law since 1984. It is recognized in Canada as a defence for crimes committed in urgent situations of clear and imminent peril in which the accused has no safe avenue of escape or legal way out of the situation. There is an objective or reasonableness requirement that requires the accused to reasonably resist the pressures that led to the commission of the crime. Anyone is entitled, by virtue of s.8(3) of the Criminal Code, to rely upon any excuse or defense available to him at common law. The exception to this is, as per s.8(1) The provisions of this Act apply throughout Canada except (a) in Yukon, in so far as they are inconsistent with the Yukon Act; (b) in the Northwest Territories, in so far as they are inconsistent with the Northwest Territories Act, and (c) in Nunavut, in so far as they are inconsistent with the Nunavut Act.
Lieutenant Colonel Justice John Harris Byrne, was the Senior Judge Administrator of the Supreme Court of Queensland. Having been a judge of that court since 1989, he was one of the court's most experienced judges. He was also Chair of the National Judicial College of Australia, a body which provides programs and professional development resources to judicial officers in Australia.
DPP v Morgan [1975] UKHL 3 was a decision of the House of Lords which decided that an honest belief by a man that a woman with whom he was engaged with sexual intercourse was consenting was a defence to rape, irrespective of whether that belief was based on reasonable grounds. It remained the law until the enactment of the Sexual Offences Act 2003.
The decision in the 1964 case of People of California v. Hernandez by the California Supreme Court brought into question the validity of the rule that mistake as to the age of a female is no defense to a statutory rape charge.
