About: R v Shivpuri

R v Shivpuri [1986] UKHL 2 is a House of Lords case in English law as to whether a criminal attempt which had a "more than merely preparatory act" and mens rea of an inchoate stage but of a crime which transpired to be impossible (or rendered lawful) in its completion – as the actus reus unwittingly related to a lawful, not what the defendant apprehended to be an unlawful substance – amounted to an attempt to commit a crime. The judicial panel, the highest court of England, decided it would amount to the crimes of attempted dealing in and harbouring a controlled drug, with intent to evade the prohibition of importation of the same. In doing so, it overturned its own ruling the year before in Anderton v Ryan, applying the Practice Statement of 1966.