Friday, May 17, 2013

Giving reasons for dismissing appeals

›
The constitutional importance of reasons being given by an appellate court when it dismisses an appeal is emphasised in Laing v The Queen (...
Thursday, May 09, 2013

A failed attempt at retrospective criminalisation

›
Where an "offence is committed by an omission to perform an act that by law there is a duty to perform" (s 4.3(b) of the Criminal ...

Judicial redefinition of veracity evidence

›
In our Evidence Act 2006 , the veracity rules concern particular kinds of character evidence. They may be used by a defendant to show a pro...
Tuesday, April 02, 2013

Search and the implied licence to enter private property

›
In criminal law the facts can be simple but the law complex. This is why criminal lawyers appear to some observers to be vastly more intelli...
Saturday, March 30, 2013

Informed advice on consequences of plea: changing perceptions of fairness

›
Sometimes when judges make new rules they apply retrospectively to cases that have already been decided. Obviously this could cause chaos, s...
Friday, March 29, 2013

Jeopardy from silly acquittals?

›
"To permit a second trial after an acquittal, however mistaken the acquittal may have been, would present an unacceptably high risk tha...

Sniffer dog reliability and probable cause for search

›
There were times when Aldo the drug dog was not on his best form. He was trained to detect the presence of particular drugs, but sometimes h...
Saturday, March 23, 2013

Secondary participation in conspiracy

›
For a compellingly logical analysis of secondary participation in conspiracy, see R v JF , 2013 SCC 12 (1 March 2013). Although the form of...
Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Old problems with new evidence

›
Whether failure to call evidence at trial should be grounds for quashing a conviction is an issue that often has to be decided in appeals, a...
Friday, March 15, 2013

Attribution and the actus reus

›
Sometimes where there is more than one defendant alleged to be a principal offender (that is, one who personally does the actus reus with t...
Sunday, March 10, 2013

Essential reading for trial lawyers

›
Thanks to Peter Tillers for bringing attention to a paper on DNA evidence that is essential reading for trial lawyers, particularly defence...
Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Amending the Criminal Procedure Act 2011 [NZ]

›
Some tweaking of the Criminal Procedure Act 2011 has been found to be necessary. My submissions on the Criminal Procedure Legislation Bill...
Friday, February 15, 2013

Contempt, imprisonment and appeals

›
A few interesting remarks on imprisonment for contempt and on sentence appeals generally were made in B (Algeria) v Secretary of State for t...
Thursday, February 14, 2013

Withdrawal from offending at common law – evidential and legal burdens

›
The burden and standard of proof of the affirmative defence of limitation, and some aspects of the affirmative defence of withdrawal, were ...
Monday, February 11, 2013

The effect of trial delay on sentence determination

›
Aggravating factors at sentencing do not include delay in the proceedings if the defendant was not responsible for that delay. Nor do they ...
Thursday, January 31, 2013

Not a long vacation

›
And now a quick look at some decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada, the delivery of which reminds us that in the Northern Hemisphere it i...
Wednesday, January 02, 2013

Proportionate confiscation of proceeds of crime

›
You can't read the dissent of Lord Phillips and Lord Reed in R v Waya [ 2012] UKSC 51 (14 November 2012) without marvelling at its br...
Wednesday, December 26, 2012

A veiled attack on substantive fairness in Canada?

›
The substantive right to a fair trial must be distinguished from its procedural correlatives such as the right to confront witnesses and to...
Monday, December 24, 2012

The obligation to select an impartial jury

›
Jury vetting was last week the subject of three decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada. All three inevitably focus on trial fairness. R...