Saturday, August 25, 2012

Overwhelmed by prejudicial evidence

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When is an error at trial insufficient to require an appeal court to quash a conviction? The more the attention that is given to this questi...
Friday, August 24, 2012

And now we are eight!

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And that is 8 years of this site's existence. It isn't really a blog in the sense of an invitation to readers to post comments. Inst...
Thursday, August 16, 2012

When can one defendant rely on another defendant’s statement to the police?

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If two defendants, A and B, are on trial together, when can A rely on part of B's statement to the police if B does not give evidence? B...
Saturday, August 11, 2012

Scholarly and incite-ful

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A small but fascinating point of general interest arises in The Queen v Khazaal [ 2012] HCA 26 (10 August 2012). If a defendant has the ev...
Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Delay and its various remedies

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The Privy Council has recently corrected any impression that may have existed about when unreasonable delay should result in the staying of ...
Monday, July 23, 2012

Issue estoppel and sentencing facts

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A routine application of issue estoppel, applying R v Mahalingan [2008] SCC 63 (noted here on 15 November 2008) is R v Punko , 2012 SCC 39...
Monday, July 16, 2012

Appellate error and wit

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In the spirit of helpfulness ... Don't rely on what our Court of Appeal said in Tutu v R [ 2012] NZCA 294 (5 July 2012) about there be...

Association with criminal groups

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Some comments of general interest on criminal organisations or what are sometimes called organised criminal enterprises or organised crimina...
Monday, July 02, 2012

Law reform by stealth

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Sometimes the implications of law reforms or new legislation dawn on me rather slowly. This can happen to other people too, thank goodness, ...
Thursday, June 21, 2012

What are the mental elements of dangerous driving?

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Dangerous driving is risk-based, not negligence-based: King v The Queen [2012] HCA 24 (20 June 2012). It is not necessary to ask whether th...
Friday, June 15, 2012

Responsibility for dangerous driving

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The offence of dangerous driving is carefully analysed in R v Roy , 2012 SCC 26 (1 June 2012), where the appellant had been convicted of d...
Saturday, June 09, 2012

Criminal responsibility, insanity, diminished responsibility and the role of the common law

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The criteria for holding a person (D) responsible in criminal law for a particular harm emerge from moral decisions. These criteria are man...
Thursday, May 31, 2012

Ascertainable law

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The law must be ascertainable. This is a requirement for the enforceability of enacted law and for the validity of common law. In jurisdicti...
Saturday, May 26, 2012

What is a verdict?

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And for more on procedure as a means of giving effect to the substance of the law, see the failure of this concept in Blueford v Arkansas ...
Friday, May 25, 2012

Too late! Or is it ...?

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As everyone knows, procedural laws are for bringing the law into effect. Procedure brings the law to life, as I once said. Another thing tha...
Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Causing moral responsibility

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In Maybin v R , 2012 SCC 24 (18 May 2012) Karakatsanis J for the Court discusses the criteria for determining that D's acts have caused ...
Friday, May 11, 2012

Suppressing contempt

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Our Court of Appeal has today confirmed the inherent power of a court to suppress its judgments on an interim basis in order to protect the...
Thursday, April 19, 2012

My 500th posting: Probative value and independent evidence

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Probative value is the tendency that an item of evidence has to prove an issue in a case. Does the measure of that tendency depend on other ...