Discuss the criminal liability of Brenda, Dev and Masatoshi.

Description

Brenda is a freelance graphic designer who works from home but was finding it hard to focus on her work with her daughter also at home all day while the schools were closed under COVID regulations (to all but the children of key workers). One morning Brenda accompanies her daughter to her school. Brenda persuaded the teacher at the school gate to take her daughter for the day, telling him untruthfully that she was a key worker, an intensive care nurse working nights, but had been too stressed to tell the school sooner. The next day Brenda received an e-mail confirming her daughter could attend school daily as the daughter of a key worker—for which no payment was required, it being a state school.

Moreover, Brenda’s daughter could also attend the afterschool club for two hours a day, for which payment was usually required, but was being waived for the children of keyworkers during the COVID period, the only children permitted to attend. This came as a pleasant surprise to Brenda who did not know the afterschool club was running at all in the COVID period. Brenda’s daughter attended both regular school and the afterschool club for nearly a month until her mother’s deception was discovered. Brenda’s near neighbour Dev has often worked as a ‘personal driver’ for Boss, a gang member with a reputation for violence towards those who cross him. Dev had indeed completed a prison sentence four years earlier for keeping lookout and driving Boss away after the latter had committed armed robbery.

Boss has now also finally completed his prison sentence and threw a party at his house to celebrate his release. Dev, on leaving the party, made the mistake of smuggling out Boss’s prized Samurai sword. Dev only meant to take the sword for a little while and then return it to Boss in front of an audience for a laugh. The trouble was Boss immediately took the loss of the sword (which he had himself stolen from someone else) extremely badly and ever since has repeatedly vowed to kill whoever took it when he finds out who that is. Dev hid the sword at home in the hope Boss would one day stop the threats so he could return the sword safely.

Dev decided to confide his problem to his friend Masatoshi. Masatoshi owns a restaurant on the other side of town and suggested that he should borrow the sword himself. He explained that a feature of the décor at his restaurant is a set of Samurai swords hanging on the wall. Masatoshi’s solution was simply to hang Boss’s sword up in plain sight with the rest of his collection.

Dev agreed and passed the sword to Masatoshi, thinking he would get the sword back from Masatoshi and return it to Boss when Boss finally stops issuing threats. Masatoshi in turn figured that he could protect Dev with this plan and enhance his sword collection at the same time. Without telling Dev, Masatoshi resolved never to return the sword to Dev as he did not believe Boss could ever be trusted not to kill Dev if he finds out what Dev did, even if Boss has stopped issuing threats beforehand.

Discuss the criminal liability of Brenda, Dev and Masatoshi.

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