Saturday, July 23, 2011

To retry or not to retry, that is the question

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A strong legal system will ensure a fair trial for a defendant who is obviously guilty of a serious crime. R v Maxwell [2010] UKSC 48 (judg...
Thursday, July 14, 2011

Substantive and procedural fairness

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Procedure is the means by which the law is brought to life. It converts words to actions. The law recognises a right to a fair trial, and th...
Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Changing perceptions of fairness

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The law seems to move rather slowly for poor people in Trinidad and Tobago, if Krishna v The State (Trinidad and Tobago) [2011] UKPC 18 (6 ...
Sunday, July 10, 2011

When time is broke ...

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"What is dawn in the city to an elderly man standing in the street looking up rather dizzily at the sky?" This sentence from the ...
Saturday, July 09, 2011

Don’t let me spoil this one by quoting ...

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There are rare moments when a brilliant judgment makes others look vapid and pathetic. So it is with Judge Bonello's roasting of the Hou...
Saturday, July 02, 2011

Sorts of fairness: abuse of process, plea bargaining and the stay of proceedings

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There is something unsettling about R v Nixon , 2011 SCC 34 (24 June 2011). It is the possibility that an issue of trial fairness may be de...
Friday, July 01, 2011

What price access to justice?

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Today our new Legal Services Act 2011 comes into force, just as we are digesting Lady Hale's Sir Henry Hodge Memorial Lecture, " Eq...
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...