Criminal law – Defences. Section 45 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 did not implicitly require the defendant to bear the legal or persuasive burden of proof of any element of the defence. The Court of Appeal, Criminal Division, held that the burden on a defendant was evidential; it was for the defendant to raise evidence of each of the elements and for the prosecution to disprove one or more of them to the criminal standard in the usual way.