R v Heard [2007] EWCA Crim 125
Facts
Heard was heavily intoxicated when police officers took him to hospital. During the encounter he behaved abusively and deliberately made sexual contact with an officer. He was prosecuted for sexual assault. He later said he could not remember what had happened and argued that voluntary intoxication might prevent proof of the intentional touching required by the offence. The trial judge treated sexual assault as an offence of basic intent for this purpose. The appeal concerned whether the statutory word intentional necessarily made the offence one of specific intent.
Legal Issue
Does the requirement of intentional touching make sexual assault an offence of specific intent for the rules on voluntary intoxication?
Held
The Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal. Sexual assault required deliberate touching, but that did not mean it was an offence of specific intent for the intoxication rules. The categories of basic and specific intent cannot be resolved simply by finding the word intentional in the statutory definition.
Voluntary intoxication could not be relied on in the manner proposed to negate the basic-intent offence. The prosecution nevertheless had to establish that the touching was deliberate rather than accidental and prove the remaining statutory elements. The defendant's inability to remember the encounter afterwards was not the same as proof that the required conduct or mental state had been absent at the time.
⭐ Legal Principle
Sexual assault is treated as an offence of basic intent for voluntary-intoxication purposes despite requiring intentional touching. The presence of the word intentional does not itself make an offence one of specific intent, and later memory loss does not establish absence of the required mental state.
Significance
Heard illustrates the technical nature of the basic/specific-intent distinction. It prevents students from classifying an offence solely by one word in its definition. The case also distinguishes actual absence of the required mental element from inability to recall events later. An answer must identify the particular intoxication rule and the statutory elements, rather than assume either that drunkenness excuses the conduct or that intention need not be considered at all.
Common exam questions about this case
Why did intentional touching not make this a specific-intent offence?
The categories used for intoxication do not follow automatically from the presence of the word intentional in a statute. Heard treated the deliberate touching required for sexual assault as compatible with basic intent for this purpose. The court therefore rejected the defendant's proposed classification of the offence.
Did the prosecution still need deliberate touching?
Yes. The judge's direction required the touching to be deliberate rather than accidental. Treating the offence as one of basic intent did not erase its statutory elements. The question was how voluntary intoxication could be relied upon, not whether the prosecution could ignore the nature of the act altogether.
Why was later memory loss not decisive?
A person may act deliberately while intoxicated and later be unable to remember it. Loss of recall therefore does not establish that intention was absent when the touching occurred. The court must assess the evidence of the conduct and relevant mental state, rather than equate amnesia with a legal defence.