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+ | Perverting The Course Of Justice | ||
+ | Doing an act tending and intending to pervert the course of public justice[1] is an offence under the common law of England and Wales. | ||
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+ | Perverting the course of justice can be any of three acts: | ||
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+ | Fabricating or disposing of evidence | ||
+ | Intimidating or threatening a witness or juror | ||
+ | Intimidating or threatening a judge | ||
+ | Also criminal are: | ||
+ | |||
+ | conspiring with another to pervert the course of justice, and | ||
+ | intending to pervert the course of justice | ||
+ | This offence, and the subject matter of the related forms of criminal conspiracy, have been referred to as: | ||
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+ | Perverting the course of justice | ||
+ | Interfering with the administration of justice | ||
+ | Obstructing the administration of justice | ||
+ | Obstructing the course of justice | ||
+ | Defeating the due course of justice | ||
+ | Defeating the ends of justice | ||
+ | Effecting a public mischief[2] | ||
+ | This proliferation of alternative names is "somewhat confusing".[3] | ||
+ | |||
+ | This offence is also sometimes referred to as "attempting to pervert the course of justice". This is potentially misleading. An attempt to pervert the course of justice is a substantive common law offence and not an inchoate offence. It is not a form of the offence of attempt, and it would be erroneous to charge it as being contrary to section 1(1) of the Criminal Attempts Act 1981.[4] | ||
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+ | This offence is triable only on indictment.[5] |