scope of that design and used the extreme violence which was intended to cause grievous bodily harm or death. The judge’s direction in the appellant’s case did not deal with that situation (or with) the appropriate verdict of not guilty should the jury find the second and/or third defendant went beyond what was contemplated by the appellant. On the facts of the case there were only two verdicts open to the jury, guilty or not guilty of murder. If, as the Crown contended, she was a party to an agreement to kill, she was guilty of murder. If she was a party to an agreement to inflict some harm, short of grievous bodily harm, then she was guilty of neither murder nor manslaughter. The victim’s killing and the manner of the killing could not be within the ambit of the agreement to which the appellant was a party, if the ambit was confined on her part to an intention that only some harm should befall the deceased, albeit not death or really serious injury. The issues involved could not be distinguished from those adumbrated by Widgery LJ in Lovesey and Peterson (1969) 53 Cr App R 461. The judge failed to remind the jury of the law as laid down in Anderson and Morris (1966) 50 Cr App R 216 and followed in Lovesey and Peterson (1969) 53 Cr App R 461. The result of that non-direction was that the jury returned a verdict which was not open to them. R v Stewart and Schofield [1995] 3 All ER 159 (CA)

ABSTRACT

Hobhouse LJ: In R v Reid (1975) 62 Cr App R 109 at 112 Lawton LJ, delivering the judgment of the court, said:

When two or more men go out together in joint possession of offensive weapons such as revolvers and knives and the circumstances are such as to justify an inference that the very least they intend to do with them is to use them to cause fear in another, there is, in our judgment, always a likelihood that, in the excitement and tensions of the occasion, one of them will use his weapon in some way which will cause death or serious injury. If such injury was not intended by the others, they must be acquitted of murder; but having started out on an enterprise which envisaged some degree of violence, albeit nothing more than causing fright, they will be guilty of manslaughter.