Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Trial by unjust law

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Today’s decision by our Supreme Court, Hansen v R [2007] NZSC 7 (20 February 2007), holds that some trials are conducted under law that is ...
Thursday, February 08, 2007

How satisfying was that!

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The High Court of Australia has, this week, held that the requirement that a judge be “satisfied” of something (here, the appropriateness of...
Monday, February 05, 2007

Appeal verdicts

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How should an appellate court decide whether a verdict is safe? It is difficult to find agreement among senior appellate judges on the safet...
Friday, February 02, 2007

Reliability and relevance

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Concealed within the requirement that evidence, to be admissible, must be relevant, is a threshold of reliability. It is a fundamental princ...
Friday, January 26, 2007

Propensity and logic

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For my observations on the admissibility of propensity (similar fact) evidence under the Evidence Act 2006[NZ], in the light of Bayes' T...
Friday, January 19, 2007

Stare decisis in the European Court

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Some interesting points are illustrated in Young v United Kingdom [2007] ECHR 48 (16 January 2007). A prisoner was found to have been denie...
Thursday, January 11, 2007

To speak, or not to speak?

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For my observations on advising clients whether to talk to the police,  Click here.  
Friday, January 05, 2007

Improperly obtained evidence

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For my observations on the new provision in the Evidence Act 2006[NZ] concerning the discretion to exclude improperly obtained evidence, Cli...
Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Observations on hearsay

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For my observations on the new hearsay provisions of the Evidence Act 2006[NZ], Click here.  
Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Deceit from a distance

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Today our Supreme Court held that a person who, outside New Zealand, causes a copy of a document to be created in this country (here, by sen...
Monday, December 18, 2006

Extended secondary liability

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To be guilty of serious crime you must intend to do the prohibited thing. Intention is the fundamental requirement for liability. Those two ...
Friday, December 15, 2006

Reliability and hearsay

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Yesterday, the Supreme Court of Canada made some observations on hearsay that are relevant to issues that will arise in New Zealand under ou...
Monday, December 11, 2006

The balance of probabilities

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Sometimes, cases that are not quite interesting enough to warrant a blog entry here, nevertheless contain dicta that are worth noting. Such...
Monday, December 04, 2006

Attempting to conspire

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A good example of a policy decision about the scope of criminal law comes from the Supreme Court of Canada in R v Dery [2006] SCC 53 (23 No...
Monday, October 30, 2006

November hiatus

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Its time for a vacation! Blog entries will resume in December. 

Perceptions of bias

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Despite their almost constant preoccupation with the fairness of trials, some senior appellate courts still have difficulty in appreciating ...
Friday, October 27, 2006

"Perverse" acquittal, or "conscience" verdict?

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One of the things that keeps appellate courts busy is the tendency of judges to overlook the fundamentals of the law. I noted one such funda...
Wednesday, October 18, 2006

"Unfair to try" or "to try unfairly"?

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Boolell v The State (Mauritius) [2006] UKPC 46 (16 October 2006) illustrates the difference between the questions, (i) whether the trial wa...
Thursday, October 05, 2006

NZ criminal law may be fair!

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Readers of these blogs will be pleased to see that criticisms of Moloney v New Zealand (see blog entry for 3 May 2006, and the article deve...

Challenging detention pending bail

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 A prompt and automatic opportunity to challenge the lawfulness of detention is a key provision to prevent arbitrary detention and to protec...
Monday, October 02, 2006

Going international

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Strip searches that are not carried out in compliance with proper safeguards to protect the dignity of those being searched may attract reme...
Monday, September 11, 2006

Negligent Barristers

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Negligent barristers will – or should, despite their negligence – sit up straight and contemplate the Supreme Court’s removal of barristers’...
Friday, August 25, 2006

Checking the foundations

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On this, the second anniversary of the start of this blogsite, when I am about to comment on a case where the meaning of "beyond reason...
Thursday, August 24, 2006

The absolute right to a fair trial

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The Supreme Court of New Zealand has accepted that the accused’s right to a fair trial is absolute, that breach of this right is a substanti...
Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Public debates on admissibility

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Should the courts encourage public discussion of judicial decisions about the admissibility of evidence? This is one of the important questi...