JOYCE vs DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS (HOUSE OF LORDS)

FACTS:

The defendant, Joyce, was a natural-born American citizen, taken to Ireland by his parents at the
age of three, whoapparently became secretly naturalized by British subjects. About 1921, when
he was fifteen years old, he came toEngland, where he remained until 1939. On July 1933, he
applied for a British passport, describing himself as born onIreland, said passport was granted for
five years. Joyce made several subsequent renewal of his passport, all thereindescribing himself
as a British subject. On 1939, he left England for Germany, where he remained throughout the
war.He was arrested by British army in Germany in 1945, and had in his possession a document
indicating that he had beenhired by the German as an English propagandist since 1939. He was
brought back to England and indicted for hightreason for adhering to the King’s enemies
elsewhere than in the King’s Realm, to wit, in the German Realm, contrary to the Treason Act,
1351.
 He was convicted and sentenced to death by the King’s Bench, the court holdingthe passport
held by Joyce spoke for itself.
ISSUE:
Whether or not the defendant is entitled to the reciprocal duties of protection and allegiance
between a citizen and the state.

HELD:

NO. Lord Jowitt LC referred to the reciprocal duties of protection and allegiance between a
citizen and the state, saying: ‘The contention is a different one: it is that by the holding of a
passport he asserts and maintains the relation in which he formally stood, claiming a continued
protection of the Crown and thereby pledging the continuance of his fidelity. In these
circumstances I am clearly of the opinion that so long as he holds the passport he is within the
meaning of the statute a man who, if he is adherent to the King’s enemies in the realm or
elsewhere commits an act of treason.

Moreover the special value to the enemy of the appellant’s services as a broadcaster was that he
could be represented as speaking as a British subject and his German workbook showed that
it was in this character that he was employed, forwhich his passport was doubtless accepted as
the voucher.