搞个新的“盲盒”系列“Common Law Case Collection”，点开之前读者不会知道讲的哪个案例，以及为什么讲~读这个系列的，大家都是进阶选手了，所以不会配太多讲解，如有疑问的欢迎底下留言，我会私信回复~
这个案子是时任LORD CHANCELLOR审的
The first comment I make is that I believe that this is the first time that the Practice Statement (Judicial Precedent) [1966]1 W.L.R.【上议院偏离Doctrine of Precedent的首份文件】 1234 has been applied to a decision as recent as that in Anderton v. Ryan [1985] AC 560.【一名名叫Bernadette Ryan的女子，她购买了一台录像机，并错误地认为它是偷来的。实际上，并没有证据表明这台录像机是偷来的。Ryan女士被控企图处理赃物。上议院裁定，如果一个人错误地认为自己正在做的是犯罪行为，而实际上该行为是无辜的（即使完成也不会犯罪），则不应对企图犯罪负责。这意味着，如果实际上犯罪行为是不可能的，那么企图犯罪的指控也不能成立】 Ordinarily I might have been loth to take so bold a step, even though I may have entertained privately the thought that such a case so recently and so carefully considered and supported by two such powerfully reasoned judgments was nevertheless seriously open to question. Quite clearly a departure from recent decisions by means of the Practice Statement has dangers of its own which are too obvious to need elaboration. But there is obviously much to be said for the view about to be expressed by my noble and learned friend that "if a serious error embodied in a decision of this House has distorted the law, the sooner it is corrected the better." This consideration must be of all the greater force when the error is, as in thepresent case, to be corrected by a palinode composed by one ofthe original authors of the majority judgment. I also agree withmy noble and learned friend that in the very nature of the presentcase it would seem impossible that anyone could have acted to hisdetriment in reliance on the law as stated in the decision departedfrom. Thirdly, as one of the authors of the decision in Reg. v. Smith (Roger) [1975] AC 476 I must say that I had hoped thatmy opinion in that case would be read by Parliament as a cri decoeur【‘主啊，这到几时呢？，指强烈反对】, at least on my part, that Parliament should use its legislative power to rescue the law of criminal attempts from the subtleties and absurdities to which I felt that, on existing premises, it was doomed to reduce itself, and, after long discussions with the late Lord Reid, I had reached the conclusionthat the key to the anomalies arose from the various kinds of circumstance to which the word "attempt" can be legitimately applied, and that the road to freedom lay in making an inchoate crime【在英美法系刑法中，未完成罪（inchoate crime）是来源于普通法的一个传统概念，它除了包括犯罪的未遂与中止以外（有些犯罪行为没有达到刑法分则条文要求的完整程度），还包括犯罪的教唆与共谋（有些应受惩罚的人并没有直接去实行分则条文规定的犯罪要件）。】 of this nature depend on a prohibited act (the so called, but ineptly called, "actus reus") 【刑法上的行为要素：被视为与犯罪者的意图或心理状态分开考虑的行为或一系列行为。】amounting to something more than a purely preparatory act plus an intent (as distinct from an attempt)to carry the act through to completion. When the Criminal Attempts Act 1981 was carried into law, and I read section 6 which abolished altogether the common law offence except as regards acts done before the commencement of the Act, I was happily under the impression that my hopes had been realised, and that my carefully prepared speech in Reg. v. Smith (Roger) would henceforth be relegated to the limbo reserved for the discussions of medieval schoolmen. It was therefore with something likedismay that I learned that the ghost of my speech had risen from what I had supposed to be its tomb and was still clanking its philosophical chains about the field, and that the new Act had formed a tilting yard for a joust of almost unexampled ferocity between two of the most distinguished professors of English criminal law in the United Kingdom.
Legal Principle：
犯罪尝试（attempted crime）中“不可能的尝试”（impossible attempt）