The taint of intoxication

Abstract

The defence of intoxication within the framework of common law criminal jurisprudence continues to receive extensive criticism. The purpose of this article is not to add to these criticisms per se, many of which have been fully discussed recently in this Journal by Mitchell,’ but instead to consider the effect of the intoxication doctrine upon other criminal law defences. At present, many common law jurisdictions, including England2 and Canada,3 accept a rule which restricts the availability of the defence of self-induced intoxication to so-called specific intent crimes.4 This rule is built on policy and has the effect of convicting intoxicated defendants for crimes of recklessness and basic intent, by ensuring that evidence of intoxication is inadmissible to show lack of mens rea. In short, a plea of self-induced intoxication will often be fatal to the accused and may even be viewed as relieving the prosecution of its normal burden of proving mens rea for the offence. Certainly, one thing is clear, the courts have consistently taken a hard line towards the plea of self-induced intoxication, having often expressed the view that, in such cases, the defendant deserves punishment as a result of having allowed himself to get into an incapacitated condition. However, the effects of this doctrine do not stop there, but have instead been used by the judiciary to control the availability of other quite separate defences, where the defendant has been found to have been intoxicated at the time of the commission of the offence. The primary purpose of this article, therefore, is to explore the interrelationship between the intoxication doctrine and other defences, in order to critically assess the way in which the courts have over-zealously allowed their attitude towards self-induced incapacity to taint and infect alternative methods of exculpation which might be otherwise open to the accused.