Wednesday, May 21, 2014

When the right hand unfairly finds out what the left has been doing

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If something can go wrong, it will, and there can't be many criminal defence lawyers who will be surprised that there has been a glitch ...
Sunday, May 18, 2014

Harmless lawbreaking by judges

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There are times when judges fail to obey the law, in the conduct of trials, but that failure doesn't matter. For example, in Stout v R ...
Saturday, May 17, 2014

Assessing reasonableness of suspicion

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When can a tip-off provide the police with reasonable grounds to suspect that an offence has been committed?  If the informant is not kn...
Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Dangerous indifference

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Recklessness as to whether a complainant is consenting to sexual activity is not the same as recklessness as to why the complainant isn'...
Saturday, May 03, 2014

Paying for doing harm

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For discussion of how to determine the amount of restitution (often in criminal law called reparation) a defendant should pay a victim who...
Friday, April 18, 2014

Article by Lord Phillips: Closed Material

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As a special favour to yourself – a reward for a virtuous life – read the article by Lord Phillips on the way courts accommodate the need t...
Thursday, April 17, 2014

Fairness and contempt proceedings

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Procedural fairness in contempt proceedings is the topic of general interest in Dhooharika v The Director of Public Prosecutions (Mauritiu...
Friday, April 04, 2014

Points to file away ...

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To do an act “with” the defendant Policy was an important consideration in interpreting the phrase “to do an indecent act with or upon” t...
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...