ACCESSORY LIABILITY: PERSISTING IN ERROR

Extract

IN Miller v The Queen [2016] HCA 30, the High Court of Australia (HCA) declined to follow the Privy Council and UK Supreme Court (UKSC) in abolishing the doctrine of extended joint criminal enterprise, as PAL is known in South Australia. Under the Australian doctrine, liability for murder is imposed where an individual “is a party to an agreement to commit a crime and foresees that death or really serious bodily injury might be occasioned by a co-venturer acting with murderous intention and he or she, with that awareness, continues to participate in the agreed criminal enterprise” (at [1]). This reflects the very position that was abandoned in Jogee [2016] UKSC 8; [2016] 2 W.L.R. 681 Ruddock v The Queen UKPC 7 as a “wrong turn” of the English common law.