'Well, the burden never shifts, but it does': celebrity, property offences and judicial innovation in <em>Woolmington v DPP</em>'

Crosby, K

doi:10.1017/lst.2022.25

'Well, the burden never shifts, but it does': celebrity, property offences and judicial innovation in Woolmington v DPP'

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Kay Crosby ORCiD

Downloads

Published version [.pdf]

Licence

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).

Abstract

In his 1935 judgment in Woolmington v DPP, Viscount Sankey declared the prosecution's burden of proving the accused's guilt was a 'golden thread', running 'throughout the whole web of English criminal law'. This article explores what Woolmington can tell us about the appeals process - and about the criminal law itself - less than thirty years after the first automatic right to appeal was created in English criminal law. It argues that the decision helps us understand the political pressures that could help to form - and make possible - legal decisions during this period. And it finds that the Woolmington decision itself - both in the text of the decision and in its immediate reception - was more universal than it was fundamental. Woolmington, I argue, has always been more about the high-level principles of English criminal law than about securing any kind of minimal procedural rights for a defendant.