Conviction appeals: a virtual proviso?

I am not saying that updating one’s textbooks is a wonderful hobby.

But it can bring to your attention cases that, although currently suppressed, are of great interest to lawyers.

One such opened on my screen this morning. Because of its suppression order, and the possibility that the order may still be in effect (the case is not currently freely available online), I dare not speak its name. Nor will I say anything about its alleged facts, the charge(s), or anything else that could with any seriousness be regarded as a breach of the order.

The legal point is about how appellate courts are to interpret s 232(2)(c) of the Criminal Procedure Act 2011, concerning certain types of appeals against conviction. Specifically, and in historical context, has the removal of the proviso affected the meaning of “miscarriage of justice”? Under the proviso, an appeal could be dismissed if, notwithstanding the existence of a miscarriage of justice, it was not a “substantial” miscarriage of justice.

The new approach, under the current legislation as interpreted by the Court in this case is, if there has been an error relating to the trial that is more than inconsequential or immaterial, ask (1) whether the error has resulted in a real risk that the outcome of the trial was affected adversely to the appellant; and if there is that risk, ask (2) whether on the material available to the appellate court the court can be sure that the appellant is guilty, taking a conservative approach to this assessment in the light of the disadvantages that the appeal court has.

Has the Supreme Court read-in a proviso? On the plain words of the legislation, which are admirable for their simplicity and not in need of modification, there is no proviso. The appellate judges just assess a risk, and do not have to reach a verdict. But the approach set out by the Supreme Court comes down to: if there is a real risk that an error affected the result of the trial adversely to the appellant, allow the appeal “provided that” (my words)  the appeal can be dismissed if the appeal court finds the appellant guilty.

I suggest that it is important to recognise that an appellate court is not permitted to readily accept that guilt is proved on the record, but must be very careful and only dismiss appeals where guilt is obvious.

And to those who say, "But Don, if the answer to question (1) is yes, how can the answer to (2) also be yes?" I can only reply, I feel your pain.

The Court has turned a statutory question which addresses how the fact-finder at trial could have been affected into a question about the appeal court's verdict.

To what extent was there a problem of statutory interpretation here? To what extent should a court rely on the expectations of people who work in the background in the preparation of legislation (and who write explanatory notes to bills), to ascertain the meaning of an enactment? There are statutory directions about how legislation is to be interpreted (we have the Interpretation Act 1999 and the yet to come into force Legislation Act 2019 update: it was fully in  force, except for s 148, on 28 October 2021) and these point to using the text and purpose of the enactment - and here we would look at the purpose provision of the Criminal Procedure Act 2011, s 3, which is simply "to set out the procedure for the conduct of criminal proceedings". On the face of the legislation (s 232 of the Criminal Procedure Act 2011) there is no interpretive difficulty.

On a plain reading, s 232 reproduces the approach to appeals that had been accepted in R v McI [1998] 1 NZLR 696 (CA), as described in Matenga (below) at [12]-[13]. The focus in McI was on what the jury would have done, and the appellate court was not required to come to its own verdict. This raises the question whether the drafters of the legislation were thinking of the law as stated in McI when they said that no change was intended. [1]

It is only when one tries to fit the law as modified in Matenga into the new provision - in accordance with the prediction of the legislation drafters that there would be "no change to the core principles underlying the courts' current approach" to these appeals - that some interpretive stretching is needed. What the core principles underlying the courts' approach were is indeed itself an interpretive question.

I have commented on a case concerning the relevance of the old law to new law on appeals, Baini v The Queen [2012] HCA 59 at [14]-[15]. (In the update to that comment, I have referred to the present case, but with its citation only.)

In the present appeal the interpretive point was obiter, because the Court found that an evidential ruling had rendered the trial unfair, and that therefore the conviction(s) had to be quashed without further consideration of the evidence. Naturally, the Court would want to decide at the earliest opportunity how s 232(2)(c) works, and it did seek submissions on the point, but as it turned out there was no argument because counsel agreed that there had been no change in the law. Normally, failure to take an issue, and the obiter nature of the decision, would make a case weak authority, but obviously here the authoritative decision has been made.

Still, one mustn’t mope. Moving forward with this: the position really isn’t all that bad. The decision is that if an appeal court finds that there was an error at trial that created a real risk of an adverse outcome for the defendant, the appeal against conviction must be allowed unless the appeal court can be sure, on the evidence properly admissible, that the appellant’s conviction was correct. This approach is that which had been clearly set out in R v Matenga [2009] NZSC 18 (where inadmissible evidence had been adduced by the prosecution and the Supreme Court could not be satisfied that the admissible evidence proved guilt). In Matenga the Court noted at [32] that where a case turns on the honesty or reliability of witnesses the appeal court is unlikely to be able to be sure of the defendant’s guilt, and this was the position in Matenga (at [35]). Where inadmissible evidence was relied on at trial, the appellate approach is as stated in Lundy v R [2019] NZSC 152 at [42], and see Ellis v R [2021] NZSC 77 at [29]-[30] (leave to adduce evidence refused).

I think it would be sensible to treat the first question as whether there could have been the requisite risk, and then, if there could have been, ask whether there was such a risk, and to answer that by reference to the appeal court's verdict.

Interestingly, in refusing leave to adduce evidence in the Ellis appeal, the Court rejected a Crown submission that on appeal the Court would essentially be acting as the "final trier of fact" (at [32]), and stated that it would be engaged in "determining whether a miscarriage of justice occurred at the appellant's trial. That is a quintessentially appellate task." This view pushes any thought of the proviso (the old law applies to this appeal) well into the background.

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[1] Mistakes can occur in the explanatory notes and official commentaries. In the Select Committee Report on the Bill the Commentary on the appeal provisions contains a misunderstanding of the significance of the word "rehearing" (see my note on 2 December 2019). Anyway, the Commentary was added when the original draft of the relevant clause (236) was revised by removing a reference to rehearing, and by defining substantial miscarriage of justice to include reference to trial unfairness, so that after later removal of the word "substantial" by the Committee of the Whole House, the clause  was brought into a form mirrored in what is now s 232. I recently found my submissions to the Select Committee (17 February 2011) in which I raised concerns about the appeal proposals, including an objection to the use of the expression "substantial miscarriage of justice". The then Chief Justice wrote to the Committee a few days later (25 February), also submitting that the word "substantial" should be omitted. The fact that the Bill was called the Criminal Procedure (Reform and Modernisation) Bill does suggest that it shouldn't be assumed that its provisions do not reform the law. And you can see from the linked documents that the Commentary's assertion of no change precedes the deletion of the word "substantive" at the last Committee stage. However, the same assertion is repeated in the Supplementary Order Paper (SOP No 281) which deleted the word "substantial": "The amendment simplifies but does not alter the test for allowing an appeal against conviction." While that may be partly true, you might still wonder why, when the wording was under consideration, no effort was made to expressly give any verdict determining ability to the appellate court by including an equivalent to what the Court has in the present case formulated as the second question.

The police as community caretakers - a "third source" authorisation?

Can the police enter without warrant (or statutory or common law authority) the house of an absent occupier to search for weapons that the absentee might use to commit suicide?

The Supreme Court of the United States has held, no: Caniglia v Strom, 20-157 USSC May 17, 2021.

The Court was unanimous, and was careful to make it clear that this decision did not affect the established law relating to entry without warrant but in exigent circumstances. The exigent circumstances exception has been confined within narrow limits, essentially so that the law conforms with common sense.

Broadly, it is not necessarily unlawful, in exigent circumstances - that is, circumstances of emergency to protect life - for the police to enter private property without first applying for a warrant to authorise that entry.

Independent of exigent circumstances, the police may (in the United States at least) generally take actions that any private citizen might take.

This decision of the Court rejects the proposition that the police may act pursuant to a “community caretaking” duty.

So, caretaking is insufficient to make warrantless entry of private property lawful; there must be exigency.

Recognition that the police can do what any private citizen might lawfully do, is controversial. It calls to mind the “third source” of governmental authority proposed by some jurists. See, for example, BV Harris, “A Call to Maintain and Evolve the Third Source of Authority for Government Action” (2017) 27 New Zealand Universities Law Review 853. See also my comment on Ngan.

The "third source" theory, repeated almost to the point of reifying the concept, is that sources of legal authority - here, the authority of the police as exercisers of the executive power of law enforcement - are legislation, firstly primary, or secondly delegated (regulations or legislative instruments), or "thirdly" facts which call for a response. [1]

Regardless of its source, a power of search must be exercised reasonably. Reasonableness (or, absence of unreasonableness) is not the source of the power, but it is descriptive of how the power must be exercised to continue to deserve recognition as lawful.

Unlawful searches are unreasonable (there are very narrow exceptions to this - for example, where the police in good faith endeavoured to comply with a law that was open to various interpretations and which needed clarification by the legislature or by the courts), and lawful searches are sometimes carried out unreasonably.

We might doubt whether a third source is needed in the context of cases like Caniglia v Strom. The courts can craft rules about police entry into residential property if elaboration of the requirement of reasonableness is required. But the source of lawful authority is primary or secondary legislation. To place the source of legality in the facts of a case is to invite anarchy. [2]

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[1] I am differing here from the usual counting of sources, in discussions of governmental powers, where the first two are parliamentary and the royal prerogative. In the present context it seems sensible to recognise the two types of legislation, as the prerogative has no application to the law of search. It may be suggested that the third source is really that which is necessarily implied with the grant by legislation of search powers. But implications are not necessarily obvious without a factual context, and where that is so I prefer - for third source purposes - to think of the facts as giving rise to (in the sense of motivating) the interpretation. Implications from the text of legislation are first or second source, whereas implications from the facts might be third source - if indeed the third source is a real thing. See S v Commissioner of Police [2021] NZHC 743 at [64], [80].

[2] Just a bit of exaggeration here, probably. The name "third source" may be misleading: it seems to be not a source of power but a freedom that exists to do what is not prohibited by positive (legislation or judicially-made) law. See Jeff Simpson, "The Third Source of Authority for Government Action Misconceived" (2012) Auckland University Law Review 86. While we are thinking about this, and the hypothesised power of the police to do anything that an ordinary person could lawfully do, let's note the Right Honourable Sir Stephen Sedley's comment in London Review of Books, vol 43, no 13 (1 July 2021), p 19: (in an only slightly different context), that is "a formula that embraces acting out of caprice, greed or spite."