Denise And Sally's Argumentative Essay

Denise and Sally may be liable to a range of different crimes. Denise’s liability may include, Assault, Robbery, and Grievous Bodily Harm (GBH). Sally may also liable to some of these offences, as she was an accomplice in many circumstances. There are a few defences that may be available to Denise and including self-defence and duress by threats to absolve her criminal liability.

1. ROBBERY

Firstly, I will address the issue of Denise’s criminal liability to robbery. Robbery is a “species of theft which is aggravated by assault” . For Denise’s actions to amount to robbery there needs to be evidence of theft and force. The offence of robbery is defined in the Theft Act 1968. It states that a person is guilty of robbery if there is evidence

Many critics would argue that it is unfair for Denise to be liable to imprisonment for life as there is a fine line theft and robbery, Denise has only marginally made the requirements for robbery. Snatching a purse is not as significant as a “carefully planned bank raid” , for example. Andrew Ashworth has stated that this area of law is in “desperate need of modernisation” . He argues that many other criminal acts have a range of different offences depending on the seriousness of the case; an example would be the OAPA . This has a range of sanctions for different levels of crime including common assault, ABH and GBH, whereas in the Theft Act 1968 “robbery covers from a push to the most violent robbery”. If force is used, even when it is relatively slight force, a defendant’s sentence can be extended from seven years imprisonment can be liable to imprisonment for

Evidence of this is found where Denise “threatens Victoria with a gun”. This fulfils the requirement of “immediacy” as Victoria is instantly and directly presented with the threat of Denise’s gun; this is proven by Victoria’s reaction to seek to escape from the situation where “Victoria tries to lunge for Denise’s gun”. In the case of Lewis a women received threats from her husband. It was found that there must be an element of immediacy between the threats and the apprehension of harm. The wife apprehended harm and immediately sorted escape. There is no statutory definition for the immediacy requirement; the courts tend to take a case-by-case approach. Lord Steyn, however, did attempt to define the meaning in Ireland stating that fear of violence “within a minute or two“ may be sufficient to amount to assault . In addition, in relation to apprehending harm anything that can put V in fear will satisfy the AR. In Logdon it was found that regardless to whether the gun presented was real or not, if it causes V to apprehend harm then it would be enough to suffice to assault. “If the victim suffers no apprehension there can be no assault”. Victoria is unaware if the weapon is real or not. Thus, it is clear that Victoria will apprehend that force will be