Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Deterrence or rights protection: why exclude improperly obtained evidence?

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Davis v United States (2011) USSC No 09-11328 , 16 June 2011 emphasises the rationale for declining to exclude evidence obtained by unreaso...
Monday, June 27, 2011

Public Defence Service costs and private bar legal aid costs

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A spat looms on whether the Public Defence Service is more expensive than having legally aided criminal cases dealt with by the private bar:...
Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Bring on the holidays!

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Grown-ups will remember when we used to use the pejorative term Kafkaesque. This word comes to mind on reading R v EMW 2011 SCC 31 (17 June...
Saturday, June 18, 2011

Risks, aversions, coercion, and provocation

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A clutch of recent Privy Council decisions: the risks of dock identification, the Board's aversion to the death penalty, jury perception...
Wednesday, June 15, 2011

The unsaid unchartable universe

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The more one says, the more one does not say. The universe of discourse is infinite. This is why attacks on reasoned judge-alone decisions m...
Thursday, June 02, 2011

Raising the bar

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For a collection of articles illustrating brilliant scholarship in our areas of interest, see the Journal of Commonwealth Criminal Law , ava...
Tuesday, May 31, 2011

New complications for old

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Mahomed v R [2011] NZSC 52 (19 May 2011) shows that the law of similar fact evidence is still contentious. It has recently been reformed, b...
Thursday, May 26, 2011

Non-disclosure and trial fairness

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An appellate court often has to ask whether a trial was fair. Statutory requirements for allowing conviction appeals usually include "a...
Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Writing for judges

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Do not even consider living a day longer without reading these interviews with the Justices of the United States Supreme Court: The Scribes...
Thursday, May 19, 2011

Avoiding the paperwork

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The United States Supreme Court has handed police what may seem to be a legal way of searching homes without the need to obtain warrants: Ke...

Counter-intuitive evidence: should neutrality be sought?

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Correction of wrong intuitions is important to prevent jury bias. Commonly held assumptions about the way a complainant should behave may un...
Sunday, May 15, 2011

Compensation for wrongful convictions

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When should a person whose conviction has been quashed receive compensation? This question of entitlement is different from the question of ...
Wednesday, May 11, 2011

To put or not to put?

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I suppose the most general lesson that can be learnt from the fact-specific decision of the High Court of Australia in Braysich v R [2011] H...
Friday, May 06, 2011

Offensive or disorderly behaviour

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"Offensive or disorderly" behaviour in terms of s 4(1)(a) of the Summary Offences Act 1981 are "two sides of the same coin...
Wednesday, May 04, 2011

Sorry, I can’t think of a heading for this one ...

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Pfennig v R (1995) 182 CLR 461; [1995] HCA 7 is rather restrictive on the admissibility of similar fact evidence. (See my discussion of th...
Monday, April 25, 2011

Book Review: Justice for Hedgehogs by Ronald Dworkin

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Even lawyers who are not interested in ethics and morals should be fascinated by the brilliant book Justice for Hedgehogs (2011) by Ronald ...