Friday, March 28, 2014

They say we can't, but we say we can! Fairness trumps logic in the Privy Council.

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Every judge dislikes constraints on jurisdiction that impede justice. One can be confident about that. In our legal system – and perhap...
Saturday, March 22, 2014

Can technology make extradition for trial unnecessary?

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If you need clarification of disclosure obligations in the context of extradition proceedings involving the “record of case” procedure, Dot...
Saturday, March 15, 2014

Have you tried marine biology?

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I’m told that there are some people who need to use little untruths to advance their chance of romantic success. The most famous exampl...
Sunday, March 09, 2014

My goodness! Is that a gun?

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For what would be accepted in the common law world as a conventional analysis of secondary liability insofar as it applied to the facts of R...
Thursday, March 06, 2014

Hidden defences and concealed charges

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Defence lawyers are familiar with the difficulty of deciding how to make the best of one defence while not losing a fall-back defence in th...
Friday, February 28, 2014

The power to consent to search: a question of law or of fact?

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One occasionally wonders how those who wrote the Fourth Amendment to the “Constitution for the United States of America” would have decide...
Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Evaluating opinions

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R v Sekhon , 2014 SCC 15 (20 February 2014) is interesting on when an expert’s opinion has no probative value, and on the appellate court’...
Monday, February 24, 2014

The Canadian slant on trial fairness and the stay of proceedings

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When prosecution misconduct imperils the fairness of a trial, and no other remedy can be found to eliminate any real risk that the trial wi...
Sunday, February 23, 2014

Two occasions for caution: dock identification, and witnesses who may have an improper motive

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Where a witness has had an opportunity at an identification parade to identify the defendant but has failed to do so, the prosecutor should...
Saturday, February 22, 2014

Provocation and law

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For an interesting authoritative – subject to statutory variation - survey of the law of provocation, see Daniel v The State (Trinidad and...
Friday, February 21, 2014

And what are our fees from crime?

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What does a judge need to consider at trial if a defendant’s evidence is not accepted? “The case in which a defendant advances a defenc...
Friday, February 14, 2014

The view from above

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Just as cirrocumulus stratiformis clouds are broadly similar to cirrus spissatus undulatus clouds, and most of us don’t really pay much h...
Thursday, February 13, 2014

One angry juror

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The integrity of the trial process was called into question in Smith v Western Australia [ 2014] HCA 3 (12 February 2014). After a jury h...
Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Stop the tendering for sentence!

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Overruling an established sentencing practice, the High Court of Australia held that, at sentencing, the prosecutor should not make submiss...
Friday, February 07, 2014

Using hypotheticals

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Even if your own legislature hasn’t replicated s 68 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 [UK], an offence of aggravated t...
Friday, January 31, 2014

Erroneous concessions

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It would be manifestly unfair for a defendant to be held to a concession that was made because of a mistake of law: R v Mackle (Northern I...
Monday, January 20, 2014

Stop the discussion!

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The dissent in R v MacDonald , 2014 SCC 3  (17 January 2014) is so cogently reasoned that one wonders why the majority didn’t refer to it or...
Monday, December 23, 2013

When your thought becomes my experience

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Another aspect of B(SC12/2013) v R [ 2013] NZSC 151 (19 December 2013) is its varieties of judicial interpretation of ss 40(3)(b) and 4...