Anderton v Ryan [1985]

Anderton v Ryan [1985] AC 560 is a notable House of Lords case in English criminal law, specifically addressing the application of Section 1(2) of the Criminal Attempts Act 1981 in situations where an act that would amount to an offence becomes impossible due to a misunderstanding of the circumstances, rendering the offence impossible. The case laid the groundwork for a subsequent reversal of this position in R v Shivpuri [1986].

A woman purchased a video cassette recorder (VCR) under the mistaken belief that it was stolen. She reported an unrelated burglary at her house to the police and, during the investigation, confessed to having purchased the VCR, thinking it was stolen. No evidence was found to confirm that the VCR had actually been stolen. The woman was convicted of attempted handling of stolen goods.

The House of Lords held that impossibility was not within the scope of the offence under Section 1(2) of the Criminal Attempts Act 1981, or any other residual offence from earlier legal precedents. Essentially, the court ruled that if the complete act was impossible due to a misunderstanding, the inchoate offence (attempted handling of stolen goods) was also impossible. As a result, the conviction was quashed.

This decision emphasised the principle that the offence of attempt required a real, rather than an imagined, possibility of completing the criminal act. In the circumstances of this case, where the VCR was not stolen, the court found that the attempt to handle stolen goods had failed due to impossibility.

However, it is important to note that the decision in Anderton v Ryan was later overruled by R v Shivpuri [1986], where the House of Lords determined that a mistaken belief by the defendant that he was committing an illegal act, even if the act was not illegal in reality, could render the defendant liable for attempt. This marked a shift in the understanding of the law on criminal attempts, focusing more on the defendant's intent rather than the objective legality of the act.