Woolmington v DPP [1935] AC 462

Reginald Woolmington was convicted of murdering his wife, claiming the shooting was accidental. The trial judge directed that he had to prove accident. The House of Lords quashed the conviction, holding that the prosecution must always prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

Facts

The appellant, Reginald Woolmington, aged 21½, married his 17½-year-old wife in August 1934. Following the birth of their child in October, the marriage deteriorated and his wife left him on 22 November 1934 to live with her mother. On 10 December 1934, Woolmington sawed off the barrels of a gun taken from his employer’s barn, loaded it with two cartridges, and went to the house where his wife was living. His wife was shot and killed.

Woolmington’s account was that he had taken the gun intending to threaten suicide in order to persuade his wife to return to him, and that as he drew the gun across his body it accidentally went off. He maintained the death was a pure accident. On arrest, he said:

“I want to say nothing, except I done it, and they can do what they like with me. It was jealousy I suppose. Her mother enticed her away from me. I done all I could to get her back. That’s all.”

At the second trial (the first jury having disagreed), Woolmington was convicted of wilful murder at Bristol Assizes on 14 February 1935 and sentenced to death. The trial judge directed the jury that once the killing was proved, the law presumed the act to be murder unless the accused could satisfy the jury that the killing was accidental or otherwise excused or alleviated. The Court of Criminal Appeal dismissed his appeal, applying the proviso to s. 4(1) of the Criminal Appeal Act 1907. The Attorney-General certified a point of law of exceptional public importance, permitting the appeal to the House of Lords.

Issues

The central issue was whether, in a murder trial, once the prosecution proved that the accused had caused the deceased’s death, the burden shifted to the accused to prove that the killing was accidental, provoked, or otherwise not murder. In particular, whether the proposition derived from Foster’s Crown Law (1762), and repeated in subsequent authorities and textbooks, that

“In every charge of murder, the fact of killing being first proved, all the circumstances of accident, necessity, or infirmity are to be satisfactorily proved by the prisoner, unless they arise out of the evidence produced against him: for the law will presume the fact to have been founded in malice until the contrary appeareth”

represented an accurate statement of English law.

Arguments

The prosecution relied upon the long line of authority represented by Foster’s Crown Law, Stephen’s Digest, Archbold, Russell on Crimes, Halsbury’s Laws of England, and Rex v. Greenacre (1837), all of which contained statements suggesting that once killing was proved, the burden lay on the accused to establish matters of excuse, justification, or alleviation.

The appellant contended that the trial judge’s direction reversed the burden of proof, and that it is always for the prosecution to establish the guilt of the accused, including the requisite malice, beyond reasonable doubt.

Judgment

The House of Lords, in an opinion delivered by Viscount Sankey L.C. (with whom Lord Hewart L.C.J., Lord Atkin, Lord Tomlin and Lord Wright concurred), allowed the appeal and quashed the conviction.

Viscount Sankey undertook an extensive historical review of the authorities, going back through Coke, Hale, Hawkins, Foster and the various early cases including Mackalley’s case, Rex v. Legg, Reg. v. Mawgridge and Rex v. Greenacre. He observed that Sir Michael Foster was a textbook writer for this purpose, not laying down doctrine in a decided case, and that no earlier authority supported his proposition. The older cases were principally concerned with the ingredients of murder (in particular the meaning of express and implied malice) rather than with the burden of proof. He noted that the law of evidence had been “in a very fluid condition” and that expressions such as “presumption of guilt” and “prima facie evidence of guilt” were often misleading, meaning no more than that on proof of certain facts the jury would be warranted in convicting.

Viscount Sankey held that if the accused’s explanation, or a review of all the evidence, leaves the jury with a reasonable doubt as to whether the act was intentional and unprovoked, the accused is entitled to be acquitted. He famously stated:

“Throughout the web of the English Criminal Law one golden thread is always to be seen, that it is the duty of the prosecution to prove the prisoner’s guilt subject to what I have already said as to the defence of insanity and subject also to any statutory exception. If, at the end of and on the whole of the case, there is a reasonable doubt, created by the evidence given by either the prosecution or the prisoner, as to whether the prisoner killed the deceased with a malicious intention, the prosecution has not made out the case and the prisoner is entitled to an acquittal. No matter what the charge or where the trial, the principle that the prosecution must prove the guilt of the prisoner is part of the common law of England and no attempt to whittle it down can be entertained.”

Viscount Sankey set out that in a murder case the Crown must prove (a) death as the result of a voluntary act of the accused and (b) malice; malice may be implied where the voluntary act is intentional and unprovoked. Once evidence of death and malice is given, the accused may show by evidence or by examination of the prosecution’s evidence that his act was unintentional or provoked. If the jury either accepts his explanation or is left in reasonable doubt, they must acquit.

The trial judge’s direction, that if the Crown proved the deceased died at the prisoner’s hands the accused had to show circumstances alleviating or excusing the killing, was therefore wrong. To the extent that Foster’s proposition and the summing-up in Rex v. Greenacre supported the contrary, those authorities were wrong.

The House refused to apply the proviso to s. 4(1) of the Criminal Appeal Act 1907, holding it impossible to say that a properly directed jury would inevitably have reached the same conclusion. The conviction was quashed.

Implications

Woolmington establishes what is often described as the “golden thread” of English criminal law: the prosecution must prove the guilt of the accused beyond reasonable doubt, and there is no corresponding burden on the accused to prove innocence. The accused need only raise a reasonable doubt.

The judgment expressly recognises two qualifications: (i) the defence of insanity, where by virtue of M’Naghten’s case the burden lies on the accused, and (ii) any statutory exception where Parliament has expressly placed a burden on the accused. Outside these categories, the burden of proof remains on the prosecution throughout.

The decision corrected a long-standing misstatement of the law that had propagated through leading textbooks, including Stephen’s Digest, Archbold, Russell on Crimes and Halsbury’s Laws of England, all of which had followed Foster’s proposition. The House was in a position to conduct a more exhaustive historical inquiry than the courts below and concluded that the older authorities did not truly support a general reversal of onus.

The case is of fundamental constitutional importance in criminal procedure. It affirms the presumption of innocence as a substantive rule of English common law, binding on trial judges when directing juries. It matters to every criminal defendant, to trial judges framing directions on the burden and standard of proof, and to prosecutors, who must appreciate that they carry the burden throughout, including in respect of negating explanations such as accident or provocation raised by the defence. The decision expressly confines itself to insanity and statutory exceptions as the only recognised departures, and does not go further than the burden of proof question actually before the House.

Verdict: Appeal allowed; the conviction was quashed and the case remitted to the Court of Criminal Appeal to act consistently with the judgment.

Source: Woolmington v DPP [1935] AC 462