Outraging public decency

Outraging public decency is a common law offence in England and Wales. It is punishable by unlimited imprisonment and/or an unlimited fine.

Modern case law has established two elements that must be satisfied for the offence to have been committed:

The offence is currently prosecuted around 400-500 times per year.

In December 1987 an artist, Rick Gibson, exhibited a pair of earrings made with freeze-dried human foetuses at the Young Unknowns Gallery in London. On Thursday 3 December 1987 the earrings were seized by the Metropolitan Police Service.

On Monday 11 April 1988, on the advice of the Crown Prosecution Service, Gibson and the gallery owner, Peter Sylveire, were formally charged with the common law offences of exhibiting a public nuisance and outraging public decency. This was the first occasion on which the charge of outraging public decency had been preferred in more than 80 years.
The trial started on Monday 30 January 1989 at the Old Bailey. The judge was Brian Smedley, Michael Worsley was the prosecuting barrister, and Geoffrey Robertson and Francis Irwin were the defence barristers. On 6 February 1989 the public nuisance charge was dismissed.

A point of law was raised by the defence, which argued that "outraging public decency" was no longer known in law so long after the last occasion on which the charge had been preferred. The judge ruled that it could still be preferred no matter how long the hiatus, provided the facts fitted the offence.

On Tuesday 9 February 1989 the jury found Gibson and Sylveire guilty of outraging public decency. Gibson was fined £500 and Sylveire was fined £300.

An appeal by the defence, on the point of the validity of the charge of outraging public decency, was dismissed by the Court of Appeal, which upheld the trial judge's ruling and went some way to restating the law in this area.

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