General Defences — SQE1 practice question

A woman comes out of a shop and sees a large man pull a teenage boy off a bicycle and pin him face down on the pavement, the boy shouting for help. Believing that the boy is being attacked, she strikes the man once on the shoulder with her shopping bag, bruising him. The man owns the bicycle, which the boy had taken from outside the shop a minute earlier, and he was holding him until the police came. She is charged with battery.

Can the woman rely on the defence of another, given that the man was acting lawfully?

Option A. Incorrect answer. No, because the man was lawfully detaining a thief, so no force could lawfully be used against him.
Option B. Incorrect answer. No, because the defence is available only to those defending a member of their own family or household.
Option C. Incorrect answer. No, because she made no enquiry before striking, and a mistake that could easily have been avoided cannot assist.
Option D. Incorrect answer. Yes, because a person who intervenes to protect a child is not required to justify the force used.
Option E. Correct answer. Yes, because her honest mistake about what was happening is the basis on which the force is judged.Correct

Why

The correct answer is E. Defending another is governed by the same two limbs as defending oneself, and both are approached through the defendant's own view of events. If her belief that the boy was being attacked was genuine she may rely on it, even though it was mistaken and even though the mistake was not a reasonable one to make; the reasonableness of a single blow with a shopping bag is then judged against the attack she believed she was interrupting (R v Williams (Gladstone) (1987); s.76(3)–(4) of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008).

A is incorrect because the question is not whether the man was in truth acting lawfully but whether she honestly believed the boy was under attack, which is exactly the kind of mistake the defence accommodates. B is incorrect because the defence extends to the protection of anyone, including a complete stranger. C is incorrect because a mistake that was careless or easily avoided may still be an honest one; how easily it could have been avoided is evidence going to whether she truly held the belief. D is incorrect because it reaches the right conclusion by discarding the second limb: the force must still have been reasonable in the circumstances as she believed them to be.

Why