R v Nedrick [1986] 1 WLR 1025

Nedrick held a grudge against a woman and went to her house at night. He poured paraffin through the letterbox and set it alight. The resulting fire killed one of the woman's children. Nedrick said that he intended to frighten the woman rather than kill or cause serious injury. He was convicted of murder after the trial judge directed the jury in terms broad enough to permit intention to be found if he knew it was highly probable that death or serious bodily harm would result. He appealed on the ground that this direction failed to distinguish intention from foresight of a risk and allowed a murder conviction on an insufficient mental element.

What direction should a jury receive when deciding whether a defendant who lacked a direct purpose to kill or cause serious injury nevertheless had the oblique intention required for murder?

The Court of Appeal held that the jury direction was too broad and substituted a conviction for manslaughter. Where the defendant's purpose was not to cause death or serious bodily harm, the jury should not infer the necessary intention unless death or serious bodily harm was a virtual certainty from the defendant's act, barring unforeseen intervention, and the defendant appreciated that fact. A mere probability or substantial risk was insufficient. Lord Lane CJ described the direction as necessary to preserve the boundary between intention and recklessness. The later House of Lords decision in R v Woollin approved the substance of this test but preferred language permitting the jury to 'find' rather than 'infer' intention from virtual certainty and appreciation.

In a case of oblique intention, a jury may find intention to kill or cause serious bodily harm where that result was a virtual certainty from the defendant's act and the defendant appreciated it as such. Foresight of probability or serious risk alone does not amount to the intention required for murder.

The case supplied the foundation of the modern direction on oblique intention and moved the law away from treating foresight of a substantial risk as sufficient for murder. Its language must now be read with R v Woollin, which approved the virtual-certainty threshold while adjusting the jury direction. Earlier decisions such as Hyam v DPP and R v Moloney show the law's development. The test is evidential in form: foresight of virtual certainty allows intention to be found, but does not simply define intention as foresight.