Outraging public decency
Outraging public decency is a common law offence in England and Wales Hong Kong and the Australian states of New South Wales and Victoria. It is punishable by unlimited imprisonment and/or an unlimited fine. History. The first recorded example of the offence was "Sedley's Case" (1675) Strange 168, 1 Sid 168 - Sir Charles Sedley was prosecuted for urinating on a crowd from the balcony of Oxford Kate's tavern in Covent Garden. Definition. Modern case law has established two elements that must be satisfied for the offence to have been committed: Judge Peter Rook QC and  Robert Ward suggest that "obiter dicta" in cases such as "R v Thallman" (1863) 9 Cox CC 388 indicate that the requirement of a "public place" may be falling out of favour, due to its vagueness and redundancy to the requirement for two potential witnesses. In "R v Hamilton"  EWCA Crim 2062 an act of upskirting in public went undetected until a police search discovered indecent images. It was held that it was immaterial whether a person had actually seen the act, provided it was capable of being seen by at least two persons. Previous cases had all been  seen, but this was held to be a matter of evidence, not an element of the offence. Usage. The offence is currently prosecuted around 400–500 times per year in England and Wales. Notable criminal prosecutions. The foetus earrings case. In December 1987, artist Rick Gibson exhibited a pair of earrings made with freeze-dried human foetuses at the Young Unknowns Gallery in London. On 3 December 1987 the earrings were seized by the police. On 11 April 1988, Gibson and the gallery owner Peter Sylveire were formally charged with the common law offences of exhibiting a public nuisance and outraging  public decency. This was the first occasion on which the charge of outraging public decency had been preferred in more than 80 years. The trial started on 30 January 1989. On 6 February 1989 the public nuisance charge was dismissed. The defence raised a point of law, that "outraging public decency" was no longer known in law so long after the last occasion on which the charge had been preferred. The judge ruled that it could still be preferred no matter how long the hiatus, provided the facts fitted the offence. On 9 February 1989 the jury found Gibson and  Sylveire guilty of outraging public decency. Gibson was fined £500 and Sylveire was fined £300. The defence appealed on the point of the validity of the charge of outraging public decency, which was dismissed by the Court of Appeal, which upheld the trial judge's ruling and went some way to restating the law in this area.