Anderton v Ryan
Anderton v Ryan is a House of Lords case in English criminal law, on whether an act which would amount to an offence but which by virtue of a misunderstanding of the goods involved was impossible breaks section 1 of the Criminal Attempts Act 1981; the court established against a similar defendant the next year that the reverse should hold true in future.
Facts
A woman purchased a video cassette recorder on the belief that it was stolen. She reported an unrelated burglary in her house to the police. While they were investigating the burglary, she confessed to having purchased the VCR she believed to be stolen. No evidence was found to confirm that the VCR had been stolen. She was convicted of attempted handling of stolen goods.Judgment
The court convened 13 months and five days after the law-reported decision of the quickly referred conviction to the Divisional Court of the High Court, Queen's Bench Division. The Court of Appeal was skipped because the case was cleared in timetables and administratively for a "leapfrog appeal".The House of Lords decided that impossibility was not within the scope of the offence under s. 1 of the Criminal Attempts Act. That is, impossibility of the complete act rendered the inchoate offence also an impossibility. The conviction was thus quashed.