The first issue that arises here is A's act of taking his father's railway pas.. This could amount to theft. The law on theft is laid under Section 1 of Theft Act 1968. Under this statute

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A obtained his father’s railway pass, and substituting his photograph, used it to travel on the train, having arranged to meet B. his girlfriend, at the station. She was allowed entry to the the train platform, when she, untruthfully, claimed she had lost her train pass. Before boarding the train, B, by using a metal disc, obtained a bar of chocolate from a coin-operated machine. Entering the carriage, the two, spotting an unattended brief case, took it intending merely to look through it. Seeing nothing of interest to them, they threw it out of the window. They then ordered two cups of coffee in the restaurant carriage, which they avoided paying for, by alighting at the next station but were stopped by a railway police officer. With what crimes might A and B be charged? (Adapted from GCE Edexcel, June 1996, Section C, Crime and Society, Question 9)

The first issue that arises here is A’s act of taking his father’s railway pas.. This could amount to theft. The law on theft is laid under Section 1 of Theft Act 1968. Under this statute it is stated that a person commits theft when he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to another with the intention of depriving the other of it. Hence, the actus reus of this offence is the appropriation f property belonging to another. In this case, the railway pass belonging to A’s father clearly falls within the definitions of ‘property’ under Section 4 and ‘belonging to another’ under Section 5 of Theft Act 1968. The prosecution would not have a hard time trying to prove that A assumed the rights of an owner by taking it and changing the photograph on the pass. In R v Morris, the defendant assumes the rights of an owner by switching the price tags of two items on a supermarket shelf. This amounted to appropriation as he assumed the rights of an owner to those items and he was found guilty. The situation in this present case is similar to that of Morris. The mens rea of this offence includes dishonesty, laid under Section 2 of Theft Act 1968. To determine dishonesty, the Ghosh test applies. It should be established that A’s act was dishonest according to the standards of ordinary reasonable people. The answer here would be yes. The court would then ask if A knew that his act was dishonest according to the standards of ordinary reasonable person. I the answer is positive as well, he would have been dishonest in his act. The mens rea of this offence also includes the intention to permanently deprive the owner of the property of it. It would be fairly easy for the prosecution to prove such intention as A substituted his father’s photograph to one of his own. Hence, it seems that A would most probably be charged, and convicted, of theft.

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     The second issue that arises here is his act of using the railway pass to have a ride on the train. This could amount to the offence of obtaining services by deception. The law on this offence is laid under Section 1 of Theft Act 1978. The actus reus was clearly committed as A used the train pass in order to board the train. The deception would have occurred when A showed the pass to whoever was in charge of letting people into the station or the train. The deception must have been operative on the mind of ...

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