Seenath v R

• Jurisdiction: Trinidad & Tobago
• Court: Court of Appeal (Trinidad and Tobago)
• Judge: Wooding, C.J.
• Judgment Date: 16 September 1966
• Neutral Citation: TT 1966 CA 93
• Docket Number: No. 42 of 1966
• Date: 16 September 1966

Court of Appeal

Wooding, C.J.; McShine, J.A.; Fraser, J.A.

No. 42 of 1966

Seenath

and

Regina

Appearances:

M. de la Bastide – for The Appellant

G. Collymore – for the Crown

Criminal Law - Breaking and entering — Stealing goods — Appeal against conviction — Whether judge misdirected jury on the law relating to common purpose. — Appellant was convicted on a charge of breaking and entering a shop and stealing a quantity of goods therein. Appealed against conviction. Argued inter alia that the judge misdirected the jury on the law relating to common design. — Judge had stressed that before they could convict the appellant, the jury would have to be satisfied from his statements or other speaking circumstances that he had been acting in concert with the men who actually broke and entered and removed the goods from the shop. He then went on to explain the doctrine of common purpose. Jury however made request for a further direction on the law relating to common design. Court is of the opinion that the jury were not adequately directed on this aspect upon which specific guidance was sought. Appeal must therefore be allowed for the offence on which the appellant alone was charged.

Wooding, C.J.

1 The prisoner was convicted on a charge that in the early morning hours of Monday, December 21, 1964 he broke and entered the shop of James Soo Yam at St. Joseph and stole a quantity of goods therein. He sought and obtained leave to appeal. He complained that, in responding to the jury's request for a further direction on the law relating to common design, the learned trial judge misdirected them by saying that if the prisoner “knew at any time that Soo Yam's grocery had been broken into and he assisted in the removal of the stolen articles, he would be guilty of shop breaking”.

2 Actually, the language quoted is not that of the learned judge: it is the prisoner's interpretation of what he said. It will be necessary therefore to examine what he did in fact say.

3 First, however, the facts. Briefly they are as follow. By 6 p.m. on the day of the shop breaking and larceny the police had discovered that the prisoner's taxi had been seen at the material time close by Soo Yam's shops, and they had traced him to his house at San Juan, searched it and then taken him for inquiries to the police station at St. Joseph where he gave them a statement after having been duly cautioned. The account he gave them was aimed at removing himself altogether from any association with the crime. In sum, it was that shortly before midnight of December 20 he was awakened from his sleep and offered a fare to carry to the doctor someone who was ill but, being himself ill and another man whom he had in times past engaged to work his taxi for him being fortunately present, he had lent the car to be driven by him and did not see it again until past 11 a.m. the following day. Further, the police having found on their search of his home a bottle of whisky and a bottle of brandy, both of which Soo Yam identified to be his, he explained that they were given him as a Christmas present in acknowledgment of his kind assistance. The next day, however, he recanted. In another statement which he then gave to the police he admitted being with his taxi at the time and close by the scene of the crime. But he explained that just before midnight on December 20 he had been approached at his home and offered a job to move some boxes. He inquired from where and was told “up Curepe way”. He was also told that the things were to be taken to Santa Cruz. On instructions he picked up three men in addition to the man who hired the car and he drove, not to Curepe, but up the hill into the town of St. Joseph. There, he was told to stop, turn around thus facing the direction from which he had come and park behind a truck on the road. The three men whom he had picked up then got out leaving behind apparently asleep the man whom hired him. After being away for about half an hour, the three men returned, opened the trunk of the taxi, put some boxes in and thereafter got back into the taxi and told him to drive to Santa Cruz. On arrival there, the three men again got out leaving him and the other man behind; they took the boxes from the trunk and carried them into a house and after a while they came back to the taxi. Then for the first time, and an their inquiry, he told them that his charge was $20 which they paid him, and they gave him the bottle of whisky and the bottle of brandy to drive them to their respective homes at Morvant, Belmont and St. Joseph Road in Port of Spain.

4 In directing the jury the judge made it abundantly clear that the only evidence pointing to any participation by the prisoner in the crime charged was what might be derived from his statements to the police. The prisoner had given no evidence and made no statement in Court. The judge therefore stressed that before they could convict him the jury would have to be satisfied from his statements and any other speaking circumstances that he had been acting in concert with the men who actually broke and entered and removed the goods from the shop. He therefore explained to them what he referred to as the doctrine of common purpose, by which he said that –

“if two or more people plan to do a certain act, then the act of one of them done in pursuance of that plan becomes the act of the other. So that, if (the prisoner) had agreed with some other persons to break into the premises of Soo Yam and remove goods therefrom,...