Monday, April 28, 2008

Gymnasium improprieties

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Another case that got diverted to the irrelevant question of when the police can use sniffer dogs is R v AM [2008] SCC 19 (25 April 2008), ...

What a cute doggie!

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In R v Kang-Brown [2008] SCC 18 (25 April 2008) the accused got off a bus and his behaviour caused an undercover police officer to suspect ...
Saturday, April 26, 2008

Propensity evidence: admissibility and Bayes Theorem

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The High Court of Australia has given detailed consideration to how evidence of an accused’s propensity should be handled, in three jointly ...
Friday, April 25, 2008

Criminal and civil self-defence

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Some comments on the difference between self-defence in criminal and civil law are worth noting here. They occur in a civil action in batter...
Thursday, April 24, 2008

Strength, rights, remedies

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Sometimes, rights may be strong, but remedies weak. Virginia v Moore [2008] USSC 06-1082 (23 April 2008) illustrates strong State rights, ...

Spot the difference

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The actual and potential harm caused by an offence is a significant consideration in sentencing. It would be natural to expect that drug off...
Monday, April 21, 2008

And then there were ten ...

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Again the New Zealand Supreme Court has worked its way around the statutory prohibition on reviewing a judge’s exercise of discretion to con...
Friday, April 18, 2008

Straddling the point

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By the slimmest of margins the Supreme Court of Canada has just avoided making an awful mistake. Evidence can be admissible without it havin...
Monday, April 14, 2008

The fairness of inequality

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Should the defence always be given the same access as the prosecution has to the criminal histories of people on the jury panel? In R v King...
Thursday, March 27, 2008

Benign irrationality

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Juries don’t give reasons, so why should judges? The latest case on the proviso, the High Court’s decision in AK v Western Australia [2008]...
Thursday, March 20, 2008

Truth and consistency

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R v Stirling [2008] SCC 10 (14 March 2008) is an illustration of the common law’s treatment of the admissibility of a witness’s prior consi...
Friday, March 14, 2008

Dishonesty may not be deceptive

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Occasionally, reading a case causes you to think of something almost completely unrelated. This happened to me when I read Norris v United S...
Tuesday, March 04, 2008

Insufficiently bad is good enough

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Four topics deserve mention here in connection with Pitman v The State (Trinidad and Tobago) [2008] UKPC 15 (3 March 2008). The first three...
Friday, February 29, 2008

Facing inevitable defeat

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Every barrister knows the difficulty of presenting a hopeless case. Especially so in criminal law, where the likelihood of settling (pleadin...
Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Judicial warnings about eyewitness identifications

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Not all the warnings necessary as a safeguard against misuse of identification evidence may be required by statute. The common law may suppl...
Monday, February 25, 2008

Identifying dangerous driving

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You might think from my discussion of R v Hayes , blogged 15 February 2008, that analysing the actus reus and mens rea of an offence is quit...
Thursday, February 21, 2008

Retrospective application of new rules

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When judges strengthen the rule against hearsay to protect the accused’s right to a fair trial, can people who were convicted under the old,...
Friday, February 15, 2008

You can't always get what you want ...

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Where dishonesty offences involve the obtaining of a pecuniary advantage or valuable consideration, does that include getting what one is en...