Accessories and Abettors Act 1861
|
|
| Long title | An Act to consolidate and amend the Statute Law of England and Ireland relating to Accessories to and Abettors of indictable Offences. |
|---|---|
| Citation | 24 & 25 Vict. c.94 |
| Territorial extent | England and Wales, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland |
| Dates | |
| Royal assent | 6 August 1861 |
| Commencement | 1 November 1861 |
|
Status: Amended
|
|
| Text of statute as originally enacted | |
| Revised text of statute as amended | |
The Accessories and Abettors Act 1861 (24 & 25 Vict. c.94) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (as it then was). It consolidated provisions in English criminal law related to accomplices from a number of earlier statutes into a single Act. For the most part these provisions were, according to the draftsman of the Act, incorporated with little or no variation in their phraseology. It is one of a group of Acts sometimes referred to as the criminal law consolidation Acts 1861. It was passed with the object of simplifying the law. It collects the scattered provisions on the subject contained in Peel's Acts (and the equivalent Irish Acts), incorporating subsequent statutes.
The Act provides that an accessory to an indictable offence shall be treated in the same way as if he had committed the offence himself.
Section 8 of the Act, as amended, reads:
Whosoever shall aid, abet, counsel, or procure the commission of any indictable offence, whether the same be an offence at common law or by virtue of any Act passed or to be passed, shall be liable to be tried, indicted, and punished as a principal offender.
Section 10 states that the Act does not apply to Scotland.
The rest of the Act was repealed by the Criminal Law Act 1967 as a consequence of the abolition of the distinction between felonies and misdemeanours (see below).
In AG's Reference (No 1 of 1975) (1975) QB 773, Lord Chief Justice Widgery stated that the words in section 8 should be given their ordinary meaning.
The Act does not apply to summary offences, but section 44(1) of the Magistrates' Courts Act 1980 is to the like effect:
...
Wikipedia