Gregory v. R.

The applicant was sentenced to seven years imprisonment for abduction and robbery with aggravation. In response to his first application for leave to appeal against conviction and sentence, the judge granted him leave to appeal to the sentence, but refused permission to appeal against conviction. The applicant renewed his application for leave to appeal against his conviction. The issue on appeal was whether the indictment erroneously citing the wrong statute warranted overturning the conviction. The offence of forcible abduction can be found in the section 17 of the Sexual Offences Act, and it was formerly an offence addressed in section 56 of the Offences Against Person Act. The latter was repealed when the Sexual Offences Act passed. Although the sections are not identically worded, they create the same offence of taking away a woman, against her will, with the intent of having sexual intercourse with her. The indictment in this case had incorrectly stated that the offence was in violation of section 56 (which had been repealed at that point). Nonetheless, the Court of Appeals decided that the error was not fatal to the conviction, as an amendment would have been permissible. This leads to the conclusion that as long as indictment errors are related to the form, and not the substance, then there is no prejudice to the appellants.