Knowing Is Not Intending

The dispute

Jogee had been convicted of murder after another man carried out a fatal stabbing. The jury direction treated foresight of a possible intentional attack as sufficient within the existing approach to secondary liability. His appeal was heard alongside a separate Jamaican appeal to the Privy Council.

The court’s reasoning

The Court held that foresight was evidence from which intention might be inferred, not a substitute for intention to assist or encourage the offence. Such intention could be conditional. The correction did not abolish secondary liability or mean that association alone established guilt. Nor did it automatically invalidate earlier convictions: out-of-time appeals required a showing of substantial injustice.

Supreme Court case page, judgment and official summary. Especially paragraphs 87–99 and 100–105; the judgment was delivered alongside Ruddock in the Privy Council.

Personal reflection

The aspect I find most significant is institutional self-correction. Courts depend on precedent for stability, but stability becomes a poor defence when the reasoning underlying a rule cannot withstand examination. There is authority in acknowledging a mistake precisely because the institution has power to perpetuate it.

At the same time, the limits on reopening earlier convictions create an uncomfortable distance between correcting doctrine and repairing individual outcomes. Finality matters, but its costs are carried by particular people. That tension deserves to remain visible alongside admiration for the decision.

The judgment also invites greater care in everyday moral language. Presence, knowledge, approval, encouragement, and intention are related without being identical. A system deciding criminal guilt must resist allowing the emotional force of a terrible outcome to collapse those distinctions. Responsibility becomes more credible when it is assigned precisely, rather than expanded until everyone nearby appears equally blameworthy.

Reading the decision

Supreme Court case page, judgment and official summary. Especially paragraphs 87–99 and 100–105; the judgment was delivered alongside Ruddock in the Privy Council.

These are historical readings of the named judgments, with separate personal commentary. They do not survey every later decision or legislative change and are not advice for an individual case.

The cited sources distinguish the judgment from any official press summary; the judgment is the authoritative account.