Criminal Law Exam June 2011, questions PDF

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University of Cambridge Law Tripos exam paper....

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LAW TRIPOS Part IA LAW TRIPOS Part II EXAMINATION IN LAW FOR EUROPEAN STUDENTS

Tuesday 31 May 2011

9 to 12

Paper 3 CRIMINAL LAW Answer four questions, two from Section A and two from Section B. Answer all parts of a divided question unless instructed otherwise. You may use your own copy of Criminal Law Statutes (any edition) (RoutledgeCavendish, ed. Herring), and any monolingual or bilingual dictionary (except electronic dictionaries and specialised legal dictionaries).

STATIONERY REQUIREMENTS 20 Page Answer Book x 1 Rough Work Book x 1 Tags

You may not start to read the questions printed on the subsequent pages of this question paper until instructed that you may do so by the Invigilator

2 SECTION A 1 ‘To hold a company or legal person liable for a criminal offence is, in effect, to create a form of criminal liability without fault. ’ Is the assertion correct? In what circumstances, if any, should the criminal law hold legal persons criminally responsible for their conduct? 2 ‘The theft offence criminalises the tainted touch. The offence of fraud by failing to disclose information criminalises the tainted thought.’ Discuss. 3

When does, and when should, consent preclude criminal liability?

4 ‘The law relating to conspiracy is in such a mess, and the rationale of liability for conspiracy so unclear, that we would do better to abolish all offences of conspiracy entirely. ’ Discuss. 5 ‘The law on mistake of fact as it applies to intoxicated defendants is incoherent and unfair.’ Discuss. 6 Writing almost twenty years ago, a commentator argued that the defences available to those who have suffered domestic violence and then kill their abusers are ‘inherently unsuitable’. Is the position of such defendants better in law today? SECTION B 7 Alice and Peter live in a small terraced house and are both very afraid of dogs. Brute moves in next door with his dog, Chappie. Brute keeps Chappie in his back garden. Every day Chappie jumps across the low fence into Alice and Peter’s garden. Alice and Peter no longer use their garden out of fear that Chappie will suddenly appear. Despite Alice’s request, Brute refuses to tie up Chappie before Brute leaves the house, or to call Chappie back from Alice and Peter’s garden when he is home. Alice suffers a nervous breakdown which her doctor attributes to the ‘ongoing dog issue ’. On a hot and sunny day which Alice and Peter spend cooped up in their house, Alice says to Peter: ‘If this business with the dog continues I will kill myself. ’ Peter believes that because of her mentally fragile state, Alice would indeed kill or seriously injure herself if he cannot stop Chappie visiting their garden. He decides to kill Chappie by lacing some dog food with old pills. He places the laced dog food in Brute’s back garden by reaching over the fence. The following morning, the dog food is gone but Chappie is alive, well and back in Alice and Peter’s garden. Alice gets extremely upset and climbs on the windowsill of their upper window, crying ‘I cannot live like this any longer. It is me or the dog!’ While Peter attempts to talk her into climbing back inside, Brute says to Alice: ‘Come on then, jump, you silly cow!’ Peter draws a small pistol, aims it at Chappie and says to Brute: ‘Call back your dog right now or this will be the end of him! ’ Brute just grins. Peter shoots. The shot misses the dog and hits Brute in the leg, injuring him badly. Alice jumps and breaks her neck, dying instantly. Which offences, if any, have been committed by the surviving participants?

3 8 Victoria lives in a residential home for the elderly. Dorian, her nephew, needs money but knows that Victoria would not give him any. He therefore asks his friend Ralph to visit Victoria, posing as a religious guru, and convince her to make a generous donation to ‘The Prayer-Wise Foundation’ (which, as Ralph knows but Victoria does not know, is run by Dorian). Ralph visits Victoria, pretending to be a religious guru. He tells Victoria that, embraced by his prayers, the Foundation’s donors may find eternal life after death. When Victoria asks how she could be sure to enjoy eternal life under this arrangement, Ralph replies: ‘We cannot even know whether eternal life is possible! But shouldn’t we do all we can in this life to reach eternity, if it exists?’ Hearing these words of wisdom, Victoria hands Ralph £900 in cash for ‘The Prayer-Wise Foundation’. Ralph keeps £100 for his own use and hands the remainder to Dorian for the Foundation. When Dorian phones Victoria a few days later, she tells him that she is thinking of changing her will, which is currently in Dorian’s favour. Dorian immediately goes out to buy some rat poison. When Ralph visits him later that day, Dorian says to him: ‘Victoria is losing her marbles, now she wants to change her will! We must stop her before it is too late. ’ Dorian then suggests that Ralph should take Victoria out to eat a hot curry and slip the poison into her food to kill her. Ralph says, ‘All right, I’ll do it’, and takes the poison with him, even though he has no intention of poisoning Victoria’s food. Later that evening and with the bag of poison still in his pocket, Ralph takes Victoria out for an Indian meal. Ralph orders prawns as a starter and hot curry as a main dish. Victoria suffers an unexpected allergic reaction to the prawns and dies instantly. Ralph quickly removes from Victoria’s lifeless neck a valuable antique necklace and takes it with him as a memento. What offences, if any, have been committed by the surviving participants? 9 Todd, aged 3, and his father Jeremy are waiting for a relative in the emergency room at Quest hospital. Jeremy observes Todd wandering off around the corner. Even though Jeremy realises that Todd might be up to some mischief, he decides not to go looking for him but to wait until Todd comes back of his own accord or is brought back by hospital staff. Todd enters a nearby treatment room, where old Mrs Zitta is kept alive on life support. Todd finds pressing buttons on machines irresistible. He presses the big red button on the life support machine, thereby switching it off. Nurse Greta enters the room to do a routine check on Mrs Zitta. She chats and plays with Todd for about ten minutes, failing to notice the problem with the life support machine. Mrs Zitta dies. Had Greta attended to her straight away, she would have noticed that the life support machine was off and would have switched it back on in time to save Mrs Zitta’s life. Todd wanders off down the corridor where he encounters Lupus, a paranoid schizophrenic who believes that small children are innocents who should be with God. Even though Lupus’s medical notes state that he has a history of extreme violence against children and must under no circumstances be left unsupervised, Dr Airy-Fairy, who has not read Lupus’s notes properly, has told Lupus to wait for her in the corridor while she fetches some needles. Lupus starts to strangle Todd. When Dr Airy-Fairy returns with the needles, she sees that Lupus has his hands around Todd’s neck. Shouting ‘Let go!’, Dr Airy-Fairy stabs Lupus in his right eye with a needle. Howling with pain, Lupus loosens his grip on Todd. Todd’s life is saved but he has suffered heavy bruising to his neck. Lupus’s right eye is permanently blinded. What offences, if any, have been committed?

TURN OVER

4 10 Yvette recently confided in her aunt, Stephanie, that she worries that ‘no boy will ever want to kiss her ’. Stephanie hires a professional hypnotist, Orion, for the party held on Yvette’s 16th birthday. Orion’s website says that he takes people ‘on amazing journeys of sexual self-discovery’. Stephanie tells Orion that he should ‘not do anything too extreme as the kids are all aged between 14 and 17’ but that he should make sure that Yvette kisses a boy ‘properly and thoroughly’ while she is under hypnosis. Orion says: ‘Okay.’ At the party, Orion hypnotises Yvette. He then asks her: ‘Yvette, is there a young man in this room who you would like to kiss?’ Yvette replies: ‘Frank.’ Orion then asks Frank whether he would like to kiss Yvette. Frank, who is 15, enthusiastically walks over to Yvette and kisses her passionately on the mouth. Frank also whispers in Yvette’s ear: ‘I’m up for more than this if you are! See you later!’ Orion then reawakens Yvette from her hypnotic state. Told that, while under hypnosis, she kissed Frank, Yvette looks embarrassed and quite unhappy. Orion leaves the party immediately after his performance. Both Yvette and Frank drink a lot of alcohol during the evening. Yvette goes to sleep on the sofa. All the guests except Frank leave. Frank presses a slobbering kiss on Yvette’s mouth and begins to pull off her clothes. Yvette opens her eyes and stares at Frank. She neither helps him undress her nor protests. Frank then has sexual intercourse with Yvette. In the morning, Yvette wakes up before Frank does. Horrified to find herself naked next to the half-undressed, sleeping Frank, and with no recollection of the previous night, she pushes Frank violently off the sofa, shouting: ‘What are you doing here, you creep?! ’. Frank knocks his head against the corner of the low table in front of the sofa and suffers a mild concussion. What offences, if any, have been committed?

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