R v Betts and Ridley
1930 English criminal law case
R v Betts and Ridley (1930) 22 Cr App R 148 was a 1930 landmark case in English criminal law which established that to be convicted of a crime under the doctrine of common purpose, it was not necessary for the accessory to be present or within sight when the offence was carried out.
Facts
Victor Betts and Herbert Ridley agreed to rob a man, William Thomas Andrews, as he was on his way to the bank. Their plan was that Betts would take the man to the ground and snatch his bag. Meanwhile, Ridley would be waiting around the corner in a getaway car, which he had used to help Betts reach the scene.
Betts struck Andrews with such force with proven intent to cause serious bodily harm, that he died. Ridley was charged with aiding and abetting murder and of being an accessory before the act, which, if proven, carried the same default sentence.
Judgment
The law was considered by the trial judge who gave appropriate jury instructions. One was convicted of murder, the other of aiding and abetting the murder and, in the alternative, of being an accessory before the act with intention to remain an accessory, after the fact.
The appeal to the Court of Appeal by both men was dismissed.
Sentencing
Both were sentenced to death.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “R v Betts and Ridley” as 1930 English criminal law case. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as 1930 English criminal law case. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 27, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q7278243. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1930.
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This entry incorporates text from “R v Betts and Ridley” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.