Monday, November 29, 2010

Relevance and unreasonable rage

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There may be occasions where a judge may rule that evidence initially thought to be relevant to an issue must be ignored. The Supreme Court ...
Friday, November 26, 2010

Power to disclose

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Does voluntary disclosure to the police by an electricity supply company of the defendant's power usage breach a right to privacy? The S...
Sunday, November 21, 2010

Relevance, probative value, and Bayesian reasoning

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Peter Tillers has drawn everyone's attention to an interesting discussion of relevance, " Bayesian Wars Redivivus – An Exchange ...
Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Accounting for guilty pleas – justice, not economics

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Whereas South Australia v Totani ( last note) illustrated the error of a legislature in depriving a court of its judicial function, Hessel...
Friday, November 12, 2010

When laws go crazy

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People interested in whether a legislature may require a court to act unjustly may get some pointers from French CJ's judgment in South ...
Saturday, November 06, 2010

Fair multiplicity

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A routine point of criminal law was the reason for the unopposed allowing of the appeal in Mason v R [2010] NZSC 129 (3 November 2010): s 3...
Friday, November 05, 2010

Good character direction

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An addition to our collection of cases illustrating when absence of a good character direction requires the quashing of a conviction: Campbe...
Thursday, November 04, 2010

W(h)ither Weiss?

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Usually only one side in a criminal case appeals, but in R v Nguyen [2010] HCA 38 (3 November 2010) the Crown appealed against the Court of...
Wednesday, November 03, 2010

Classic probability conundrums

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There are many examples online of probability conundrums. I have mentioned some in my draft paper on propensity evidence, linked on this pag...
Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Another look at the right to legal advice

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The relationship between the right to legal advice and the right to a fair hearing, discussed here in commentary on R v Sinclair , 15 Octobe...
Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Provoking nostalgia

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I recall that some of the better law students used to laugh at judges' efforts to elucidate the acts reus of attempts, especially impos...
Friday, October 15, 2010

The right to legal advice

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The requirement that a confession must be voluntary has several components. One is the right to silence, and waiver of this right must be i...
Saturday, October 02, 2010

Interpreting positive drug tests in cyclists

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I am not a great follower of the sport of cycling. Apparently it is bad for the health of male genitals, and I can see why. But recently a ...
Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Ideas or decisions?

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Much that is of interest to criminal lawyers in Dickson v R [2010] HCA 30 (22 September 2010) is not discussed in the judgment. The appe...
Thursday, September 16, 2010

The best of the best

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Tom Bingham's brilliant article in the London Review of Books (26 March 2009) made many of us think he was just beginning a retirement ...
Monday, August 30, 2010

Admissiblity issue or defence?

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There is a difference between a procedural error in steps taken by an enforcement officer which provides a defence to a charge, and an error...
Friday, August 27, 2010

Saved by sunken dreams

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In Attorney-General v Tamil X [2010] NZSC 107 the New Zealand Supreme Court applied JS (Sri Lanka) v SSHD [2010] UKSC 15 (discussed here 1...
Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Doing the right thing

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And now, on the actual date of the sixth anniversary of this site, here – as my 400 th posting - is a note on Petryszick v R [2010] NZSC 1...
Monday, August 23, 2010

Time

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This week is the sixth anniversary of the start of this site. Other milestones? Forty years ago I was dux of the same secondary school th...
Friday, August 20, 2010

Bringing science to law

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For more on DNA, see the second part of the article mentioned last time: New Scientist , 18 August 2010. It confirms that the likelihood r...
Thursday, August 12, 2010

Interpreting DNA test results

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See New Scientist for an article called "Fallible DNA evidence can mean prison or freedom" by Linda Geddes, dated 11 August 2010....
Saturday, August 07, 2010

Dismissing judges for misconduct

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I imagine that all experienced barristers are familiar with bad judicial behaviour. But how bad does it have to be before a judge can be rem...
Friday, August 06, 2010

Reasonable, fair and not necessarily surprising

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When is an unannounced forced entry into an occupied dwelling reasonable? In R v Cornell   [2010] SCC 31 the majority held there were suff...
Monday, July 26, 2010

Exculpatory statements ... and trials in the fullness of time

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A brief note on two Privy Council decisions from last week: Gordon v R (Belize) [2010] UKPC 18 (21 July 2010) is an interesting little remin...
Friday, July 23, 2010

Res gestae lives again! And implied assertions are statements.

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The majority in Rongonui v R [2010] NZSC 92 did not share the Chief Justice's view that "res gestae" is an outmoded term (se...

Prior consistent statements

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Hart v R [2010] NZSC 91 (23 July 2010) addresses the law of the admissibility of prior consistent statements in the context of a claim of ...