R v Nedrick
R v Nedrick (Ransford Delroy) (1986) 8 Cr. App. R. (S.) 179 is an English criminal law case dealing with mens rea. The defendant poured paraffin oil through the letterbox of a house, against whose owner he had a grudge. The house was set alight resulting in a child being killed. The case is important as it established the "virtual certainty test" becoming the key test on indirect (oblique) intention. The court said that there may be no case where intention to offend is inferred, unless the actions of the defendant are so dangerous, that death or serious injury is a virtual certainty.
The court set down model guidance for juries in cases where intention was unclear. Lord Lane CJ said:
“Where the charge is murder and in the rare cases where the simple direction is not enough, the Jury should be directed that they are not entitled to infer the necessary intention unless they feel sure that death or serious bodily harm was a virtual certainty (barring some unforeseen intervention) as a result of the defendant's actions and that the defendant appreciated that such was the case …The decision is one for the Jury to be reached upon a consideration of all the evidence.”[1]
In summary, intent may be inferred if the following conditions are jointly satisfied:
- The result was a virtual certain consequence of an actor's conduct, and
- The actor knows that it is a virtually certain consequence
Note that in R v Woollin (1998), the House of Lords replaced "infer" with "find", for greater clarity in the model direction.
