Does the Huhne/Pryce case mark the death knell for the defence of marital coercion, asks Gerry Rubin
The trial of Vicki Pryce for perverting the course of justice is now over, and her defence of marital coercion, that her ex-husband, Chris Huhne, had forced her to take his speeding points, was rejected by the jury. This is not the first time in recent years that the defence of marital coercion has been raised in a high-profile case. In 2008 there was the case of John and Anne Darwin, the couple who had sought to defraud insurance companies of £250,000 by pretending that the husband had been drowned in a canoeing accident in the North Sea. But after the plot unravelled both were tried and convicted of the frauds and sentenced to more than six years in prison (the husband had pleaded guilty). In the case of the wife her defence of marital coercion, that her husband had forced her to aid him in the plot, failed on the grounds, first, that criminal acts committed by her had not been undertaken in her husband’s presence,
