Benign irrationality

Juries don’t give reasons, so why should judges?

The latest case on the proviso, the High Court’s decision in AK v Western Australia [2008] HCA 8 (26 March 2008), is another example of when an error at trial amounts to a “substantial” miscarriage of justice. Miscarriages of such magnitude cannot be cured on appeal by application of the proviso. In AK the trial had been by judge alone, and the judge had not given reasons for his verdict. Statute required that reasons be given. This failure was held, by a 3-2 majority, to be a substantial miscarriage of justice and a new trial was ordered.

Two majority judgments were delivered. Gummow and Hayne JJ jointly held that Weiss v R (blogged here 16 January 2006) and Wilde v R [1988] HCA 6 were not exhaustive of the situations that can give rise to a substantial miscarriage of justice. Here, the failure to give reasons for the verdict meant that the trial was not conducted according to law and that the miscarriage was therefore substantial (para 58). It was not to the point to ask whether the evidence supported the verdict.

This does not quite explain why the miscarriage was “substantial” as opposed to one that could be cured by the proviso if inspection of the evidence showed that the verdict was reasonable. Minor errors can mean that a trial was not according to law without it being necessary to quash the conviction. The other majority judgment, by Heydon J, went into the meaning of a substantial miscarriage in more detail.

The judgment of Heydon J is a forceful reminder of the advantages of trial by jury, and the resulting need to compensate for loss of those when trial is by judge alone. Footnote 75 is well worth a glance, for phrases in derogation of juries, eg many jurors are “unaccustomed to severe intellectual exercise or to protracted thought”. But juries bring a “benign irrationality” (para 97) to the proceedings. Quoting from Lord Devlin’s Trial by Jury (revised ed, 1966), Heydon J lists the five advantages of jury trials (para 93 – 97), and holds that it is necessary closely to observe the safeguards provided in relation to judge alone trials (para 98). The present case was one of extreme non-compliance with the requirement for reasons, which went to the root of the proceedings (para 109).

Within this framework, Heydon J mentions the power of juries to return perverse verdicts (para 97, and see blog entries for R v Wang 14 February 2005; R v Wanhalla 25 August 2006; R v Krieger 26 October 2006), the dangers in fact-finding by judges (para 101), the twin safeguards for the accused in the burden and standard of proof and the need for jury unanimity or a very substantial majority (para 102), the mental discipline imposed on the judge by the requirement for reasons (para 103 – 105 and 108), and the advantage that appellate courts have in ascertaining the appropriate inferences from the primary facts that have been determined by the judge in the context of the evidence that has been given (para 106, 107).

This approach to the question of how to identify a miscarriage that goes to the root of the proceedings takes us further than did the joint majority judgment, by saying that an example of this sort of miscarriage is one that, as here, prevents the appellate court from carrying out the protective function that is designed to compensate for the loss of the jury.

But is this case an example of that sort of miscarriage? The dissenting judgment of Gleeson CJ and Kiefel J acknowledges (para 17) that the appellant correctly pointed to the breach of the statutory requirement that the judge must give reasons for the verdict. Nevertheless, the magnitude of this error had to be assessed by its effect on the verdict. Here, the issue was narrow: who had committed the offences, the defendant or his brother? There was no evidence suggesting the brother was involved, and the judge’s finding that the offender was the defendant was supported by the objective circumstances (para 27). The absence of reasons was not an obstacle to application of the proviso here. So the dissenters were able to carry out the function of identifying the appropriate inference from the evidence that had been given, without being hampered by the absence of reasons for the verdict.

It is thus not necessarily persuasive to argue that an appellate court must have the judge’s reasons before it can carry out its role of compensating for the loss of a jury. Also questionable are the advantages that Lord Devlin attributed to juries. His prose was, of course, a fine example of the kind of eloquent rhetoric that now seems rather florid, and each of his propositions needs to be tested by experiment.

This is not to suggest that non-compliance with a statutory requirement to give reasons can be brushed aside. There has been a recent example of a seemingly technical error in procedure rendering a trial void (see blog on R v Clarke 7 February 2008 but contrast with Ayles v R 29 February 2008). The upholding of formal constraints on the exercise of power has its place, but it is fair to ask whether every failure to give reasons will inevitably amount to a substantial miscarriage of justice.

Truth and consistency

R v Stirling [2008] SCC 10 (14 March 2008) is an illustration of the common law’s treatment of the admissibility of a witness’s prior consistent statement. The important point has always been that such statements are not admissible as proof of their contents, but only as proof of consistency, and as such they go to the weight that the fact-finder may give to the witness’s testimony.

Central to this appeal is the idea that if the judge had used the prior consistent statement as evidence of its truth, then he would have made a serious error:

“[7] … it is impermissible to assume that because a witness has made the same statement in the past, he or she is more likely to be telling the truth, and any admitted prior consistent statements should not be assessed for the truth of their contents. As was noted in R. v. Divitaris (2004), 188 C.C.C. (3d) 390 (Ont. C.A.), at para. 28, “a concocted statement, repeated on more than one occasion, remains concocted”…”

Further, para 12, the prior statement goes to the witness’s credibility in a general sense; it would be artificial to try to separate out the witness’s credibility on the topic(s) covered in the prior statement from the witness’s credibility generally.

Personally, I wouldn’t have thought that the distinction was that difficult, but Bastarache J, delivering the judgment of the Court, said that such a separation would be “impractical and artificial” (para 12).

It could also be said that the distinction between use of the prior statement for the fact it was made, as opposed to as proof of the truth of what it asserts, is impractical and artificial. It must be acknowledged that this distinction is well established at common law, and (broadly speaking) it applies to prior statements whether they are consistent or inconsistent with the witness’s testimony. It has also, I must admit, been shown to be workable in practice, although arguably more convincingly so in judge-alone cases than where the distinction has to be explained to a jury. But the artificiality of the distinction is easy to see in respect of inconsistent statements: if the fact-finder rejects the witness’s testimony, there is then no evidence - through the witness - on the point if the prior statement is not evidence of its own truth. The prior inconsistent statement cannot then be combined with other evidence in the determination of the relevant fact, even though it has been used to reject the witness’s testimony. Strictly, it also cannot be used to enhance the weight given to other evidence on the point.

It is more sensible to treat prior statements, once they are admissible, and whether they are consistent or inconsistent with the witness’s testimony, as being like any other statements: admissible to prove the truth of what they assert. Constraints on their admissibility are necessary to confine the evidence within manageable bounds, but once admissible the availability of their maker for cross-examination should remove the need for a rule rejecting them as proof of their truth.

So, what of the point made in the quotation from Divitaris in para 7 of Stirling? If the prior statement is alleged to have been a lie, its maker (the witness) can be cross-examined to show that. If cross-examination cannot undermine the truth of the prior statement, why should it not be admissible to prove its truth?

In New Zealand there is currently some uncertainty over whether s 35 of the Evidence Act 2006 has made prior statements evidence as proof of their truth. The Law Commission apparently intended them to be evidence of their truth, but there is a first instance decision holding that they are only proof of the witness’s consistency. My own view is that the section is clearly intended to make prior consistent statements admissible, in certain situations, as proof of their truth. Subsection (2) allows such statements to be used, inter alia, to respond to a challenge to the witness’s accuracy, and subsection (3) refers to circumstantial reliability of the prior consistent statement.

Dishonesty may not be deceptive

Occasionally, reading a case causes you to think of something almost completely unrelated. This happened to me when I read Norris v United States [2008] UKHL 16 (12 March 2008).

The almost completely unrelated thing
A great risk in writing articles in specialised areas of law is that the arguments advanced in them may be rejected by the highest courts. Why write at all?

The purest motive was put vividly by Emeritus Professor John Burrows QC, formerly of the University of Canterbury and currently of the New Zealand Law Commission, in an interview with Ursula Cheer on 24 January 2007: “… I think I enjoy research probably the most. Because it’s a great thrill in getting the material together in your own mind and producing something on paper and saying it's yours. It's really yours.”

Practitioners, as well as academics, may well expect career advancement as a result of their publications. For example, the following has appeared on the web site of one writer:

“As a consequence of his publication in February and March 2005 with Sir Jeremy Lever QC of a two part article in the European Competition Law Review entitled “Cartel agreements, conspiracy to defraud and ‘the statutory offence’ ”, he was instructed by a leading New York law firm in the high profile extradition case ‘The Government of the United States v Norris’, which was the first time that the issue of cartel crime has been tested in an English court. The article formed the basis of the US government’s case as presented by David Perry QC and was extensively quoted by the judge in his judgment; John was led by Alan Jones QC.”

This is the case that the House of Lords has now decided. Unfortunately their Lordships were critical of the article:

“59 The first time it was apparently suggested in any publication that price-fixing might be a common law offence was in an article written in 2005 by Sir Jeremy Lever QC and Mr John Pike, "Cartel Agreements, Criminal Conspiracy and the Statutory 'Cartel Offence'" [2005] ECLR 90. At p 95, the authors made the point, which has already been touched on, that if, in addition to the price-fixing, something positively misleading is said, such as a dishonest "representation … that offers are being made competitively", the criminal law will be engaged. More controversially, the authors then went on to suggest that making and operating secret price-fixing agreements could, of itself, operate dishonestly so as to constitute a crime, at least in circumstances where purchasers are acting in the belief, known to the price-fixers, that there is no price-fixing.

“60 This article was not only published after the 2002 Act, but a number of years after the activities complained of in count 1 had ended. So it is not as if even an astute reader of legal articles in this area of law could have informed himself at the relevant time of the possibility of his price-fixing activities attracting criminal sanctions. In any event, although the Divisional Court was impressed with the article, there are problems with the notion that mere secrecy can of itself render the price-fixing agreement criminal. It is not as if secrecy is always necessary for a price-fixing agreement to be effective, or that it is the secrecy which causes a purchaser loss. As already mentioned, in order to establish a criminal offence along the lines suggested by Lever and Pike, it would be necessary to show that it was the secrecy which caused the purchaser's loss, since it must be the alleged dishonesty which causes the loss.

“61 Quite apart from this, it would be dangerous and impractical, particularly for the judges, to introduce a general principle that there is some sort of implied representation that the price at which goods are offered has been arrived at on a certain basis. Finally, the very fact that it was not until 2005 that it was first suggested that secret price-fixing could of itself constitute a common law offence underlines the difficulty faced by the argument that it would have been a common law offence in the 1990s, especially when one considers the material which was available on the topic from Parliament and the courts.”

It is to be hoped that the writer of the impugned article will bounce back from this blow and appreciate the light that the House of Lords has cast on the subject. Or, he will wait for the next case and hope that the Law Lords change their minds.

The next case, as it happened, came the same day: R v GG plc [2008] UKHL 17 (12 March 2008). Here, Norris was applied and it was held that in relation to conspiracy to defraud by price fixing, more than mere secrecy is required to constitute the element of fraudulence. Misrepresentation and deception have been found to be necessary (para 16, citing Norris at para 19).

Points mentioned in these cases

• In the UK there was no common law or statutory offence corresponding to the strict liability offence created in the USA by s 1 of what is known as the Sherman Act (making agreements in restraint of trade illegal; here the relevant agreement was price fixing): Norris para 23, 52.
  

• Even if there had been a change in public perceptions of price fixing, it would be for Parliament, not the courts, to create a relevant criminal offence: Norris, para 57.
  

• Strictly obiter, but nevertheless determinative: in considering extradition, it is the overall conduct alleged against the defendant that must be considered, and in the UK the question is whether the conduct is against the law of the requesting country (whatever the particular offence may be) and whether it is against UK law (again, whatever the offence – not necessarily an identical offence to the foreign one): Norris para 90, 91.
  

• Conspiracy to defraud requires proof of an agreement to make false or misleading statements or to otherwise engage in actively fraudulent behaviour. Mere secrecy and deception is insufficient (GG plc, para 12, 18).
  

As can be seen from this last point, the concepts here can be rather subtle. It helps to focus on the causal requirement: the relevant deception is the one intended (agreed) to cause loss. Keeping the agreement to fix prices secret, even to the extent of telling lies to conceal the agreement from the authorities, does not cause customers to lose the opportunity of a better price. The prices would still be the same if the customers were told that the prices had been fixed by agreement between suppliers. The necessary deception would occur if it had been represented to the customers that the prices had not been fixed, when the person making that representation knew that that was untrue, and if that deception was (as, of course it would be) designed to induce the customers to make purchases, and if that representation caused the customer to part with more money than would otherwise have been the case.

In New Zealand we have repealed the offence of conspiracy to defraud, and currently the offence of obtaining by deception (or causing loss by deception) – s 240 Crimes Act 1961 – could in appropriate circumstances be charged as a conspiracy against s 310 of that Act, as conspiracy to obtain (or cause loss) by deception. “Deception” is defined in s 240(2) in terms that are expanded from those recommended in the Report of the Crimes Consultative Committee on the Crimes Bill 1989 (April, 1991), so even at that stage of revision of the law the matter was unsettled. The House of Lords decisions mentioned here would be relevant under these provisions.

Insufficiently bad is good enough

Four topics deserve mention here in connection with Pitman v The State (Trinidad and Tobago) [2008] UKPC 15 (3 March 2008). The first three of these are not new law, just reminders of the best way of conducting trials. The fourth, also not new,  is the ground on which the appeal was allowed.

Avoiding the ironic platitude
In commenting on the accused’s failure to give or to call evidence, the judge observed that much cross-examination of apparently reliable witnesses had included imputations against character that were not supported by evidence. The Board regarded the particular comments here as “ill-chosen and of a nature which should be avoided in a criminal trial” (para 20), and quoted a passage from the summing up which concluded “However, it is [the accused’s] right to have elected to remain silent, as he did, and you cannot hold it against him”, and held (para 19):

“if a judge makes unduly unfavourable remarks about a defendant or witness, which may be prejudicial, they cannot be sufficiently neutralised by resorting to the mantra in the last sentence of the passage quoted: cf Mears v The Queen [1993] 1 WLR 818.”

Here, the remarks were held to be insufficiently prejudicial to make the conviction unsafe. Plainly, however, the Board is warning against the recitation of the accused’s right to silence as an attempt to rectify improper comment.

The duty of a court in a criminal appeal
“It is the duty of the court in a criminal appeal to take account of all the grounds which could reasonably be advanced on behalf of an appellant, whether or not they have been sufficiently argued, and their Lordships think that it was desirable that this should have been done.” (para 25)

This point was also made in Charles v R (St Vincent and the Grenadines), blogged 20 July 2007, and not cited in Pitman. The point not argued in the court below in Pitman was whether the alleged joint enterprise may have come to an end before the killings, although the Court of Appeal had allowed the co-accused’s appeal on that basis.

Nevertheless, in Pitman the Board did not consider that there had been inadequate directions on joint enterprise at the trial, and this point was not determinative of the appeal. Some criticism was made, however, of the way the judge had approached the subject in his directions to the jury.

The best perspective on complex directions
In covering the subject of liability on the basis of joint enterprise, the judge had chosen the perspective of how the accused could be guilty. The Board considered (para 25):

“…it would have been preferable if the judge had spelled out in the case of each defendant how it might be said that he did not contemplate the murder of the victims ….”

The judge’s approach was not wrong, but it could have been better. It is quite natural for a judge to focus on ways in which an accused may be guilty, because the question is what the prosecution has to prove. However the judge has to show the jury how to relate points of law to particular facts. This can be done by drawing attention to how the prosecution may fail in its task. The Board made these general remarks applicable to allegations of joint enterprise, concerning how an accused may not be a participant (para 25):

“This could be argued in any case of this nature on several bases, according to the facts of the case: that the joint enterprise never went beyond robbery and that the defendant in question did not foresee that his confederate might go beyond that and commit murder; that when he realised that things were getting out of hand and that his confederate was intending murder, the defendant withdrew from the joint enterprise by a sufficiently clearly evinced dissociation; or that the defendant was no longer part of the joint enterprise, which had earlier come to an end. These are in truth facets of the same issue, whether the defendant was part of a joint enterprise which included as one of its elements the possible murder of another person. That depends on what was agreed, expressly or impliedly, by the defendant, and if a murder takes place it may be outside the parameters of the enterprise in a number of ways, including those specified above. It is desirable that a trial judge should tailor his directions to the evidence, so that the jury have put clearly before them the basis on which to decide if the defendant agreed to the commission of the act with which he is charged.”

Fresh evidence
The appeal was allowed in Pitman because fresh evidence had been obtained concerning the appellant’s mental capacity. The accused had not had the facilities before trial to obtain this evidence. It potentially had a bearing on several issues, and the case was remitted to the Court of Appeal for those to be considered.

To qualify as “fresh” the evidence must be capable of belief and there must be a reasonable explanation for its not having been called at trial. At para 31 the Board added:

“These factors are not, however, conclusive of the issue of admission of fresh evidence, and an appellate court has the overriding statutory power to admit it if it is in the interest of justice: see Benedetto v The Queen [2003] UKPC 27, [2003] 1 WLR 1545, and cf Smalling v The Queen [2001] UKPC 12.”

See also Bain v R (New Zealand) [2007] UKPC 33 (blogged here 11 May 2007) at para 34.

In Pitman, the fresh evidence rendered the convictions unsafe because (para 31 – 32) it was both capable of belief and prima facie raised issues which were substantial and such as to require proper investigation by the court. Accordingly, the Court of Appeal would have to approach the matter as follows (para 32):

“They will have to form an opinion on the appellant's mental capacity, then, depending on the opinion which they form, they may have to decide (i) whether he was fit to plead and stand trial (ii) whether there is a sufficient doubt about his ability to understand and participate in the joint venture (iii) whether his statement should have been admitted and, if necessary, (iv) whether there is sufficient evidence to raise the defences of unsoundness of mind or diminished responsibility. If they find in the appellant's favour on any of these issues, the conviction will be unsafe and must be set aside.”

In New Zealand many criminal lawyers will be thinking about R v Barlow, in which fresh evidence was, as announced yesterday, insufficient for the Governor-General to refer the case back to the Court of Appeal. That case seems to be heading to the Privy Council. No doubt the question will be whether the fresh evidence there makes the convictions unsafe. They would be unsafe if the jury did not have evidence which was both capable of belief and relevant to assessment of the weight of the evidence it did have.

[Update: for the Privy Council decision in Barlow, see note for 9 July 2009.]

Facing inevitable defeat

Every barrister knows the difficulty of presenting a hopeless case. Especially so in criminal law, where the likelihood of settling (pleading guilty) is small. Sometimes, dissenting judgments can give clues about how the best possible arguments can be advanced.

A disagreement about whether there had been substantial defects at trial which went to the root of the proceedings occurred in Ayles v R [2008] HCA 6 (28 February 2008). The minority, Gleeson and Kirby JJ jointly took an approach similar to that of the House of Lords in R v Clarke (blogged 7 February 2008), on the issue of whether a requirement for a note on the information or indictment of an amendment to a charge is a mandatory requirement. The dissent also concerned whether a statutory provision allowed the judge to amend the charge without an application for this having been made by the prosecutor.

In Ayles the majority held that in the particular circumstances of this case there had been no unfairness to the accused in the procedure that had been adopted to amend the charge. This indeed seems correct, as the only material factual dispute in the case had been resolved in this judge-alone trial by acceptance of the accused’s version. Also, the difficulty with the charge had been the subject of discussion during the hearing and defence counsel had not taken up an opportunity to object to an amendment which was of the kind that the judge eventually made in the course of her judgment. There had been a change in the statutory provision which needed to be specified, the relevant one depending on what was the date of the offending. Apart from the section number, the change was not relevant to the facts of the case. As Kiefel J (with whom Gleeson CJ and Heydon J agreed) said at para 75, the defence could have had no objection to the amendment during the hearing. The relevant statutory provision, s 281(2) of the Criminal Law Consolidation Act 1935 (SA), did not limit the judge to acting only on an application for amendment, but she could amend the charge on her own initiative. Further, as a matter of interpretation, the particular provision requiring a note of the amendment to be made on the information or indictment, s 281(3), was not a condition for the validity of an order for amendment.

The minority in Ayles held that the noting of the amendment on the information or indictment was imperative, not directory. Since it was fundamental that a person cannot be convicted of an offence that is not alleged against him, there had been a basic defect in the proceedings. R v Clarke [2008] UKHL 8 was approved, particularly its overruling of R v Ismail (1990) 92 Cr App R 92. Further, the judge should not have amended the charge without an application from the prosecutor, because it is necessary to keep separate the functions of judge and prosecutor. Citing Gaudron and Gummow JJ in Maxwell v The Queen [1995] HCA 62 at para 26 for the proposition

“The integrity of the judicial process - particularly, its independence and impartiality and the public perception thereof - would be compromised if the courts were to decide or were to be in any way concerned with decisions as to who is to be prosecuted and for what”

they continued (para 37):

“The last-quoted sentence is of fundamental importance. It affords a most important principle that lies at the head of the resolution of this appeal. A decision to amend an information so as to add or substitute a new charge is plainly a decision about the particular charge to be laid or prosecuted, yet any suggestion that a court could - let alone should - decide for itself the offences with which a defendant is to be charged would be inimical to the judicial process.”

Applying R v Weiss [2005] HCA 81 (blogged here 16 January 2006) the minority held that these substantial defects went to the root of the proceedings and the proviso could not be applied.

It is surprising that there should be such a sharp difference between the interpretations of the legislation. Here are the relevant subsections of s 281:

“(2) When before trial, or at any stage of a trial, it appears to the court that any information is defective or that there is any variation between any particular stated therein and the evidence offered in proof thereof, the court shall make such order for the amendment of the information as the court thinks necessary to meet the circumstances of the case unless, having regard to the merits of the case, the required amendment cannot be made without injustice.

“(3) When an information is so amended, a note of the order for amendment shall be endorsed on the information and the information shall be treated, for the purposes of the trial and all proceedings in connection therewith, as having been presented in the amended form.”

The majority’s interpretation seems unanswerable: subsection (2) does not require an application to be before the judge before an order for an amendment can be made, and subsection (3) applies upon the information being amended and is not a condition for that amendment. By way of contrast, in Clarke the relevant legislation had provided: “where a bill of indictment has been so preferred the proper officer of the court shall, if he is satisfied that the requirements of the next following subsection have been complied with, sign the bill, and it shall thereupon become an indictment and be proceeded with accordingly”; that is, the signing is the act that makes the document an indictment and so is an essential condition for the existence of the indictment.

Looking at the case from a distance, I imagine that the real unfairness (although that is not quite the right word) lay in the accused being denied the opportunity to enter, and take sentencing credit for, an early guilty plea to a properly framed charge. That matter could have been sorted out at trial, but defence counsel chose not to make submissions on the point, and there could well be proper reasons for not doing so. Having played the cards that way, it was too late on appeal to ask for another deal.

The minority judgment in Ayles is a lesson in how to endeavour to meet an overwhelming argument: go to the fundamentals (here, procedural fairness and the limits of proper judicial function) and argue that the case is one of substantial miscarriage of justice. This may, as here, involve a retreat into principle and away from the facts and particular circumstances. Although not a victory, it was a dignified defeat.

Judicial warnings about eyewitness identifications

Not all the warnings necessary as a safeguard against misuse of identification evidence may be required by statute. The common law may supplement what statute requires.

Evidence Acts can be rather vague on what sort of warnings to juries must be given concerning eyewitness identification. In New Zealand, s 126 of the Evidence Act 2006, and in Australia (in jurisdictions where it is applies or is adopted), s 116 of the Evidence Act 1995 (C’th), both provisions are in general terms. Often the matter is entirely one for the common law, as in may be in Canada and is in the United Kingdom.

In Pipersburgh v R (Belize) [2008] UKPC 11 (21 February 2008) there had been no identification parade and the first visual identification of the accused persons as the offenders was made in the courtroom. The Privy Council held that its decision in Holland v HM Advocate [2005] UKPC D1 at para 47 applied. This is as follows:

"In the hearing before the Board the Advocate-depute, Mr Armstrong QC, who dealt with this aspect of the appeal, accepted that identification parades offer safeguards which are not available when the witness is asked to identify the accused in the dock at his trial. An identification parade is usually held much nearer the time of the offence when the witness's recollection is fresher. Moreover, placing the accused among a number of stand-ins of generally similar appearance provides a check on the accuracy of the witness's identification by reducing the risk that the witness is simply picking out someone who resembles the perpetrator. Similarly, the Advocate-depute did not gainsay the positive disadvantages of an identification carried out when the accused is sitting in the dock between security guards: the implication that the prosecution is asserting that he is the perpetrator is plain for all to see. When a witness is invited to identify the perpetrator in court, there must be a considerable risk that his evidence will be influenced by seeing the accused sitting in the dock in this way. So a dock identification can be criticised in two complementary respects: not only does it lack the safeguards that are offered by an identification parade, but the accused's position in the dock positively increases the risk of a wrong identification."

Accordingly, two issues needed to be addressed by the judge in directing the jury: the general dangers concerning eyewitness identification, and the particular dangers concerning dock identification. The Board summarised the inadequacies of the judge’s directions, para 17 of Pipersburgh:

“In the present case, it may well be that the judge bemoaned the fact that no identification parade had been held and pointed out the advantages of such a parade. But, despite what the Board had said in Pop v The Queen (Belize)[2003] UKPC 40, he did not point out that Mr Robateau [one of the appellants] had thereby lost the potential advantage of an inconclusive parade. Moreover, while giving directions on the care that needs to be taken with identification evidence in general, the judge did not warn the jury of the distinct and positive dangers of a dock identification without a previous identification parade. In particular, he did not draw their attention to the risk that the witnesses might have been influenced to make their identifications by seeing the appellants in the dock. And, perhaps most importantly, even if the judge's directions would have ensured that the jury appreciated that this type of identification evidence was undesirable in principle, he did not explain that they would require to approach that evidence with great care. On the contrary, the closing words of the direction really left the whole matter to the jury on the basis that the witnesses said that they knew the men and it was simply up to the jury to accept or reject their evidence.”

The circumstances in this case demonstrate that even where, in the opinion of a court of first appeal, the witnesses observed the offenders in good conditions of lighting, distance and time, and where they claimed to be recognising people they had seen several times before, it is still necessary for the judge to give a detailed warning about the risk of error.

Identifying dangerous driving

You might think from my discussion of R v Hayes, blogged 15 February 2008, that analysing the actus reus and mens rea of an offence is quite easy. In R v Beatty [2008] SCC 5 (22 February 2008) the Supreme Court of Canada unintentionally demonstrated just how difficult it can be.

At issue here was the meaning of “dangerous” operation of a motor vehicle. The Court split into separate judgments 5-3-1, and each discussed the actus reus and the mens rea requirements.

This was a case where a driver who had otherwise been driving unexceptionally suddenly crossed the centre line into the path of an oncoming vehicle, resulting in the deaths of all its three occupants. The question was whether a momentary lapse of attention could constitute dangerous driving.

The Court unanimously allowed the appeal and restored the appellant’s acquittal. The reasoning was not unanimous.

As to actus reus, five Judges held that this was established. Charron J delivered the judgment of herself, Bastarache, Deschamps, Abella and Rothstein JJ, saying (para 43):

“…it may assist to restate the summary of the test in terms of both the actus reus and the mens rea of the offence. I respectfully disagree with the Chief Justice that the test for the actus reus is defined in terms of a marked departure from the normal manner of driving (para. 67). The actus reus must be defined, rather, by the words of the enactment. Of course, conduct that is found to depart markedly from the norm remains necessary to make out the offence because nothing less will support the conclusion that the accused acted with sufficient blameworthiness, in other words with the requisite mens rea, to warrant conviction. In addition, it may be useful to keep in mind that while the modified objective test calls for an objective assessment of the accused’s manner of driving, evidence about the accused’s actual state of mind, if any, may also be relevant in determining the presence of sufficient mens rea. I would therefore restate the test reproduced above as follows:

(a) The Actus Reus
The trier of fact must be satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that, viewed objectively, the accused was, in the words of the section, driving in a manner that was “dangerous to the public, having regard to all the circumstances, including the nature, condition and use of the place at which the motor vehicle is being operated and the amount of traffic that at the time is or might reasonably be expected to be at that place”.

(b) The Mens Rea
The trier of fact must also be satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused’s objectively dangerous conduct was accompanied by the required mens rea. In making the objective assessment, the trier of fact should be satisfied on the basis of all the evidence, including evidence about the accused’s actual state of mind, if any, that the conduct amounted to a marked departure from the standard of care that a reasonable person would observe in the accused’s circumstances. Moreover, if an explanation is offered by the accused, then in order to convict, the trier of fact must be satisfied that a reasonable person in similar circumstances ought to have been aware of the risk and of the danger involved in the conduct manifested by the accused.”

This approach makes the question of the departure from the normal standard of driving relevant to mens rea, and Charron J concluded that although there was an actus reus, there was no mens rea because momentary negligence was insufficient to be a marked departure from the standard of care of a prudent driver.

McLachlin CJ delivered the judgment of herself, Binnie and LeBel JJ, and summarised their position at para 67:

“I therefore conclude that the correct statement of the law is as follows:
1. The actus reus requires a marked departure from the normal manner of driving.
2. The mens rea is generally inferred from the marked departure in the nature of driving. Based on the finding of a marked departure, it is inferred that the accused lacked the requisite mental state of care of a reasonable person.
3. While generally the mens rea is inferred from the act constituting a marked departure committed by the accused, the evidence in a particular case may negate or cast a reasonable doubt on this inference.”

Further, momentary lapse of attention could, without more, establish neither actus reus nor mens rea (para 69).

Accordingly, on this approach there was no actus reus or mens rea, but in particular there was no actus reus as there was no larger pattern of impugned driving.

In the third judgment, Fish J agreed with Charron J about the actus reus being defined according to its statutory context (para 84), and also agreed that there was no mens rea in the circumstances of this case, as the appellant had not failed to meet the objective standard of a reasonable person in the circumstances (para 87).

The difference in this case was over the actus reus: six judges held that it must be determined according to its statutory context, and that here an actus reus was proved, because crossing the centre line was dangerous. Three judges held that the actus reus was not proved because a marked departure from the normal standard of driving was necessary and this was not established by an instance of crossing the centre line in the context of an otherwise unobjectionable pattern of driving (para 66):

“…The actus reus is the act and the mens rea, or guilty mind, the intention to commit that act. If the mens rea of the offence requires a failure to take reasonable care which is inferred from the conduct of driving in a manner that represents a marked departure from the norm, then the actus reus must be the act of driving in a manner that represents a marked departure from the norm.”

This is the critical point of difference between the judges: is the actus reus to be defined as a result of the requirements of the mens rea? Para 66 begs the question in its minor premiss “which is inferred from the conduct of driving in a manner that represents a marked departure from the norm”.

It is not unusual for crimes to involve acts that are apparently innocuous but which are rendered culpable because of the state of mind with which they are done. Attempts are paradigm examples, but there are many others. On the minority view in Beatty, would driving while texting be dangerous, if there was no accident? Should this depend on how normal it is to drive while texting?

Retrospective application of new rules

When judges strengthen the rule against hearsay to protect the accused’s right to a fair trial, can people who were convicted under the old, lax, form of the rule complain? Does the new rule apply only to future cases (plus the case deciding the new rule), or can it be applied retrospectively?

In the United States of America, Teague v Lane, 489 U.S. 228 (1989) established a general rule for when changes in rules of criminal procedure can be applied retrospectively. The Teague rule is that such changes do not apply to cases that have become final before the new procedure is announced, with two exceptions: first, new rules putting conduct beyond the power of lawmakers to proscribe will be applied retrospectively, and second, watershed rules that implicate the fairness of the trial will be applied retrospectively.

Naturally enough, the interpretation of the Teague rule has generated much discussion and litigation. Yesterday, for example, the Supreme Court decided Danforth v Minnesota No 06-8273 (20 February 2008), and held that the Teague rule is a limitation on the right of Federal courts to overturn State court convictions, and it is not a limitation on the power of State courts to grant relief. That is, State courts may retrospectively apply changes to rules and may grant remedies, outside of the constraints of the Teague rule.

In Danforth the hearsay rule was relevant, underlying the admissibility of a child complainant’s video testimony. The child did not give evidence at trial, but a video recording of an interview with the child was played. In Crawford v Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004) the rule against hearsay evidence was strengthened by eliminating an exception based on indicia of reliability of confrontational testimony. The new rule is that hearsay of a confrontational nature can be admissible if the witness (ie, the person whose utterances are sought to be used as evidence) is unavailable and if the defendant had a prior opportunity to cross-examine the witness. “The only indicium of reliability sufficient to satisfy constitutional demands is the one the Constitution actually prescribes: confrontation.” This new rule is referred to as a new constitutional rule of criminal procedure. It is constitutional in the sense that it is an application of the Sixth Amendment right of an accused to be confronted by the witnesses against him, via the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process guarantee that trials will be fair. The new rule was not, therefore, an invention of the Court arising from its own policy preference, instead its origin was the Constitution itself. The rule was new in the sense of not being dictated by judicial precedent at the time it was articulated. For discussion of the rule, click here.

The Minnesota State Supreme Court in Danforth had held that it was not free, under the rule in Teague, to apply Crawford to the present case. Crawford had been decided after the petitioner’s conviction had become final. The US Supreme Court reversed this decision and remanded the case for further consideration. The Opinion of the Court noted, at pp 26-27 that the question whether there had been a violation of a right was distinct from whether there was a remedy:

“It is fully consistent with a government of laws to recognize that the finality of a judgment may bar relief. It would be quite wrong to assume, however, that the question whether constitutional violations occurred in trials conducted before a certain date depends on how much time was required to complete the appellate process.”

The US Supreme Court held (p 4) that the court below had correctly recognised that it was not obliged to apply Crawford, but held that the lower court was not prohibited from doing so.

So, after all that, it was for the State court to decide whether the new hearsay rule should apply to convictions that had been finalised before the rule was laid down. It may seem a little strange that the Supreme Court did not simply decide that the second exception to the Teague rule required that the new hearsay rule applied retrospectively, because confrontation was necessary to the fairness of the trial. Without confrontation there was no sufficient reliability, and without an opportunity to challenge the reliability of the witness the trial was not fair. Perhaps the answer is that the fairness of a trial requires consideration of all its circumstances: generally speaking, if an accused had fully and freely confessed to a crime, that confession could be sufficient on its own, or together with other non-hearsay evidence, to sustain a conviction.

The case calls to mind differing approaches to interpretation of the Constitution. Richard A Posner, in “Overcoming Law” (1995) p 174 notes that interpretation is as much creation as discovery. Aharon Barack, in “The Judge in a Democracy” (2006) pp 149-152 discusses Old Textualism, saying that “for the true intent of the author it substitutes the intent of the interpreter.” EW Thomas, in “The Judicial Process” (2005) at pp 25-26 says the declaratory theory “assists to absolve judges from personal responsibility for their decisions.” Richard Posner, in “The Problems of Jurisprudence” (1990) at p 299 prefers to recognise that interpretation has plural goals – “fidelity to framers’ intent, certainty, coherence, pragmatically good results.” Was the new rule in Crawford really dictated by the framers’ intent, or would they have recognised that reliability of hearsay evidence can be established by methods other than confrontation?

You can't always get what you want ...

Where dishonesty offences involve the obtaining of a pecuniary advantage or valuable consideration, does that include getting what one is entitled to?

And, do such offences require, to negative the elements of dishonesty and absence of claim of right, a belief in entitlement to be reasonable?

In Hayes v R [2008] NZSC 3 (15 February 2008) these questions were answered yes and no respectively.

An example of this sort of offence, and one considered in Hayes, is s 228 of the Crimes Act 1961[NZ]:

“Every one is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 7 years who, with intent to obtain any property, service, pecuniary advantage, or valuable consideration,—
(a) dishonestly and without claim of right, takes or obtains any document; or
(b) dishonestly and without claim of right, uses or attempts to use any document.”

The first thing a lawyer does is ascertain what is the actus reus of each of these offences. Here, the verbs takes, obtains, uses, attempts to use are the proscribed acts, done in relation to any document. No other act is required to be proved by the prosecution, and in particular there is no reference to pecuniary advantage or valuable consideration as part of the actus reus. It is the mens rea to which those matters are relevant.

Secondly, a lawyer will ask what constitutes mens rea for these offences. The mental elements are indicated by the words “with intent to obtain” any of the specified things. In Hayes it was held that pecuniary advantage includes the obtaining of something that one does not already have, even if one is entitled to have it. Anything that enhances the defendant’s financial position is a pecuniary advantage (para 16). This interpretation of pecuniary advantage followed that in Attorney-General’s Reference (No 1 of 2001) [2003] 1 WLR 395. Other elements of mens rea for these offences are dishonesty and absence of a claim of right. It is in relation to these that a belief in entitlement will be relevant.

As to whether the belief in entitlement has to be a reasonable belief, the Supreme Court held that it does not. A subjective belief is sufficient to negative mens rea (para 34, 35). The Court indicated that in directing a jury on this issue the judge should not refer to an honest belief, but instead should refer to the accused’s belief (para 34).

The Court examined the Crown’s submission that if there was no reasonableness requirement for absence of mens rea the law in New Zealand would be out of step with that elsewhere. This was rejected after considering the position in England, Australia, and Canada.

Strange as it seems, this aspect of the appeal had not been argued in the Court of Appeal. In R v Hayes [2007] NZCA 6 (14 February 2007) the appellant had argued that the Crown had to prove that the accused was not entitled to the pecuniary advantage in question. This was on the assumption that entitlement would negate advantage. The Court of Appeal, applying its earlier decisions, held (para 14 – 16) that there would be a pecuniary advantage if the accused had used a document in a way that avoided disclosing information that would have led to a reduction in payment, and that the accused’s actual entitlement was not in issue. In the Supreme Court the same result was reached, but it was the newly taken point on the subjectiveness of mens rea that required the appeal to be allowed (para 37):

“The Judge was thereby treating the reasonableness of the accused’s belief as a necessary ingredient rather than as simply having evidentiary significance on the question whether it was or was not held. On conventional principles this was a material misdirection which gave rise to a substantial miscarriage to which it would not be appropriate to apply the proviso to s 385(1) [of the Crimes Act 1961]. There must be a real risk that the jury, or at least some members, might have thought that Ms Hayes actually held the belief she asserted but that it was not reasonable for her to do so.”

In terms of the approach to the proviso preferred in these blogs, this was an example of the kind of substantial miscarriage of justice that arises when a misdirection results in a real risk that the law has not been applied by the jury. There was no attempt to assess the strength of the evidence and the chance of a different verdict, because the trial was fundamentally flawed.

Power and legality

Formalism, technicality, the principle of legality versus substantive justice: when can statutory requirements concerning court procedures be overlooked?

In R v Clarke [2008] UKHL 8 (6 February 2008) the failure of a court official to sign an indictment was held to invalidate the ensuing trial and to require the quashing of the convictions on that invalid indictment.

Lord Bingham delivered the leading opinion; at para 17 he observed:

“…It is always, of course, lamentable if defendants whose guilt there is no reason to doubt escape their just deserts, although the present appellants, refused leave to appeal (on other points) by the single judge in 1977 and the full court in 1998, have now served the operative parts of their sentences. Technicality is always distasteful when it appears to contradict the merits of a case. But the duty of the court is to apply the law, which is sometimes technical, and it may be thought that if the state exercises its coercive power to put a citizen on trial for serious crime a certain degree of formality is not out of place. …”

The approach to the procedural breach was to ask two questions: what did the legislature intend the consequences of the breach to be as far as the document in question was concerned, and, if the document was void, what did parliament intend the consequences to be as far as the trial was concerned.

Here, the legislation and the history of judicial application of it (in the main), led inescapably to the conclusion that an unsigned indictment was void and a trial upon a void indictment was not valid.

A difficulty, requiring clarification, was recent Court of Appeal departure from its own authority, R v Morais (1988) 87 Cr App R 9. Morais, upheld in the present case, had not been followed in R v Ashton, R v Draz and R v O'Reilly [2006] EWCA Crim 794, [2007] 1 WLR 181. Ashton had been greeted by a number of academic authorities as “a victory of substance over formalism” (para 17). Lord Bingham concluded (para 20):

“…I cannot, however, accept the basis upon which the court in R v Ashton distinguished its earlier decision in R v Morais. …”

In Ashton the Court of Appeal had made the mistake of turning the question of the intention of the legislature into a search for prejudice to the defence, and a use of the lack of any such prejudice as grounds for treating the statutory requirement as a technicality.

It is not unusual to hear judges ask counsel for the defence to identify what prejudice the accused will suffer from the departure from a requirement of procedure. In such cases, the question will be, what was the intention behind the establishment of the procedure. Absence of prejudice will often, but not always, be an answer to an irregularity.

No, you decide ...

When should a court of second appeal remit the question of whether to apply the proviso to the appellate court below?

The proviso allows an appellate court to dismiss an appeal on the basis that an error that had occurred at trial did not amount to a “substantial” miscarriage of justice.

In Mahmood v Western Australia [2008] HCA 1 (30 January 2008) the High Court of Australia remitted to the Court of Appeal of the Supreme Court of Western Australia the question of whether the proviso should be applied. The error at trial, the occurrence of which the Court of Appeal had not accepted, was held by the High Court to have been a failure by the trial judge to give the jury a direction, when all she had given was a comment.

Directions are binding on the jury, whereas comments may be ignored: para 16 of the joint judgment of Gleeson CJ, Gummow, Kirby and Kiefel JJ (with which Hayne J agreed).

In this case, part of a video tape made a week after the murder of the accused’s wife, showing the accused reconstructing for the police his movements at the scene, was shown to the jury at the request of the defence. This was to show how the accused got blood on his clothing. The defence was willing to have the jury shown the whole tape, but the prosecution objected on the ground that the tape was self-serving. The only judge to deal with this point in the High Court, Hayne J, held that the whole tape was no more self serving that an ordinary police interview which included denials of guilt: there were aspects of an inculpatory nature, such as admissions of presence at the scene, opportunity, and so on. The prosecution should adduce all the admissible evidence that it has that incriminates the accused (para 38 – 41).

A problem arose at trial because the prosecutor in closing suggested to the jury that the accused’s demeanour in the part of the video they were shown disclosed a lack of emotion consistent with a cold-blooded intent to kill. The judge declined a defence request to have the whole tape shown, saying she would deal with the matter in her summing up to the jury.

The Court of Appeal had held that what the judge told the jury was sufficient to rectify the unfairness that arose from the prosecutor’s comments. The High Court disagreed, and remitted the question of the application of the proviso to the Court of Appeal.

What would an ordinary bystander expect the Court of Appeal to do? Probably, to conclude that the failure to give the jury a direction did not matter because the comment was sufficient to rectify the unfairness.

Only the comments of Hayne J could draw the Court of Appeal away from their earlier stance. From his approach it is clear that much evidence (the two hour video tape, of which only a few minutes had been shown to the jury) that should have been adduced by the prosecution was not, and that this included evidence that could have assisted the defence.

The way the proviso is to be approached in Australia has been considered most recently in Evans v R (blogged here 20 December 2007). There, since the defence was not able to be fully put at trial (alibi evidence was not permitted to be called), and because inadmissible evidence had been allowed, the proviso could not be applied. Mahmood seems to be a case where the proviso should not be applied because a significant amount of evidence in this purely circumstantial case had not been received by the trial court.

The approach to the proviso is still obscure, even though there have been numerous considerations of it by the High Court. In declining to address the difficulty further in this case, and in remitting the question to the lower appellate court, the High Court has left the impression that it may be getting a bit tired of wrestling with the problem of when to apply the proviso.

A lesser right

When does a breach of a detainee’s right to be informed of the reasons for detention or arrest make the detention or arrest unlawful?

In Saadi v UK [2008] ECHR 79 (29 January 2008) the appellants had been held in detention at a facility at Oakington for 76 hours before they were properly informed of the reasons, which were that this was the procedure for fast-tracking their applications for refugee status. The Grand Chamber held, 11 to 6, that the procedures for processing applicants for refugee status did not breach their right to liberty and security (Art 5 § 1), but it held unanimously that there had been a violation of the Art 5 §2 right to be informed promptly of the reasons for the detention.

This latter point, that there was a breach of the right to be informed promptly of the reasons for arrest or detention, had been accepted by the House of Lords: [2002] UKHL 41 at para 48, per Lord Slynn with whom the others concurred:

“48. It is agreed that the forms served on the claimants here were inappropriate. It was, to say the least, unfortunate but without going as far as Collins J [at first instance] in his criticism of the Immigration Service, I agree with him that even on his approach the failure to give the right reason for detention and the giving of no or wrong reasons did not in the end affect the legality of the detention.”

Why not? This point, apparently being agreed between the parties, was not explained. The Court of Appeal, [2001] EWCA Civ 1512, did not deal with it, and Collins J (whose judgment is appended to the CA’s judgment) held, at para 15:

“The use of inappropriate forms and the giving of reasons for detention on those forms which may not have been wholly accurate do not affect the lawfulness of the detention. The real reason [for the detention] was the new Oakington process [ie the fast-track processing of applications]. If that was lawful, the disgraceful failure to prepare proper forms cannot render it unlawful. In any event, it may be that in the cases of the illegal entrants the immigration officers could properly rely on at least the absence of identification and the clandestine entry as factors justifying detention even if, had Oakington not been used, temporary admission would have been granted. I do not need to go into the matter further since Mr Scannell has not sought to argue that the muddle about reasons renders the detentions unlawful.”

In the European Court, the Grand Chamber upheld the Chamber’s decision that there had been a breach of the right to be informed promptly of the reasons for detention, and also that the finding of the Court constituted just satisfaction for the breach. This had not been contested on the appeal to the Grand Chamber.

Accordingly, it seems that it must be taken as obvious that if a detention is lawful, it will not become unlawful merely because of a breach of the right to be informed of the reasons for it. This right must be seen as very much a lesser right, than the right to liberty. Pragmatically, of course, that is appropriate, as it may be difficult to communicate with uncooperative detainees. The breach might have some utility in supporting a claim of self defence, if the defendant, having offered physical resistance to being detained, was consequently charged with obstruction or assault.

This approach, separating questions of the lawfulness of the arrest or detention from questions of the consequences of the breach of the right to be informed promptly of the reasons for the arrest or detention, is common. For example, in Manuel v Superintendent of Hawkes Bay Regional Prison [2005] 1 NZLR 161 (CA), it was held that:

“[64] In the High Court Miller J was prepared to accept that there were breaches of s23(1)(a) and (b) of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act [the right to be informed at the time of the arrest or detention of the reason for it, and the right to consult and instruct a lawyer without delay and to be informed of that right] which occurred when the appellant was taken into custody pursuant to the interim recall order. He concluded, however that the detention was not unlawful and, in this regard, he referred to R v Shaheed [2002] 2 NZLR 377. Miller J was unimpressed by the contention that there was also a breach of s23(3) [the right to be brought before a court as soon as possible]. He said that the suggestion that the appellant should have been taken before a Court was inconsistent with the procedure provided for under the Criminal Justice Act. In any event, when the appellant was taken into custody on the interim recall warrant, he was not "arrested for an offence".

“[65] We broadly agree with Miller J although we have reservations as to whether there was a breach of s23(1)(a) and, indeed, as to the relevance of Shaheed. The failure to comply with s23 did not render the detention under the interim recall warrant unlawful. Still less could such failure render unlawful the detention under the final recall warrant. The contention that the appellant was required to be taken before a Court by reason of s23(3) is untenable essentially for the reasons given by Miller J.”

Here the Court of Appeal had reservations about whether it was relevant to balance the right of the state to recall a parolee to detention against the right of the parolee to be informed of the reasons for his detention, which is the exercise behind the reference to Shaheed. It would indeed be an extension of the application of Shaheed if it were to be used in this context, because that is currently reserved for the determination of evidence admissibility (now enacted in s 30 of the Evidence Act 2006). What is noteworthy here is the way the courts assume that breach of the lesser right could not affect the lawfulness of the arrest or detention.

Fixing bad law: bias in military tribunals

Perceived bias can amount to a breach of a suspect’s rights at a stage of the proceedings prior to trial. This is illustrated in Boyle v United Kingdom [2008] ECHR 15 (8 January 2008). The question of whether the suspect should be released on bail prior to his court martial was determined by his commanding officer, who was potentially required to make other decisions in the proceedings, including whether to amend the charge, dismiss it, deal with it summarily, or refer it to a higher authority for determination, and whether to be involved in the prosecution of the charge. There was also a conflict between the CO’s roles because he was responsible for discipline within the suspect’s unit.

The European Court held that there had been a breach of Art 5.3 of the Convention, as the commanding officer was not within the meaning of the phrase “a judge or other officer authorised by law to exercise judicial power” because the suspect’s misgivings about the CO’s impartiality were objectively justified.

The approach to whether there is bias (actual or perceived) is the same as when the tribunal is acting as a court (eg Martin v United Kingdom blogged here 30 October 2006), but here the issue was not fair hearing (Art 6) but instead it was the exercise of judicial power (Art 5.3).

As far as remedy was concerned, the appellant had been denied bail and was acquitted at court martial. He did not claim pecuniary loss. He did seek damages for breach of his rights, but since it could not be said that if his rights had not been breached he would have been released on bail, the Court held that the judgment itself was just satisfaction for any non-pecuniary damage. For another example of this result, see Young v United Kingdom, blogged 19 January 2007.

We may wonder how snappily changes are made to the law that the European Court finds to have been in breach of the Convention. In Young, the proceedings in the European Court began on 4 July 2000 and were concluded on 16 January 2007. In the meantime, the Prison Rules were amended from 18 April 2005 in ways that appear to be designed to meet the criticisms which were made in Young.

The present case, Boyle, began in the European Court on 25 February 2000 and was in respect of proceedings that had been conducted under the Army Act 1955[UK]. New legislation, the Armed Forces Act 2006[UK] is now in place.

LCN DNA analysis

The recent decision of the Northern Ireland Crown Court in R v Hoey [2007] NICC 49 (20 December 2007) mentions that New Zealand is one of two countries (the other being the Netherlands) where the Low Copy Number DNA analysis technique is accepted as a sound basis for expert opinion in evidence.

For a discussion of that case, and of whether LCN DNA evidence has been accepted for that purpose in New Zealand, see my draft paper available here.

Cunctation

Can the prosecution cure an unreasonable delay in the proceedings against an accused by speeding them up? Or, once the accused’s right to a trial without undue delay is breached, is the only remedy a stay of the proceedings?

A difference in the English authorities on this point was recently resolved by the Privy Council in a devolution case, Spiers v Ruddy (Scotland) [2007] UKPC D2 (12 December 2007).

The resolution of the difference brought the law into line with Strasbourg jurisprudence, by upholding Attorney-General’s Reference (No 2 of 2001) [2003] UKHL 68, and declining to follow R v HM Advocate [2002] UKPC D3.

Accordingly, if it is still possible to hold a fair trial, a stay of proceedings is not the appropriate remedy for undue delay, unless it would be, for any compelling reason, unfair to try the accused. Where neither of these two forms of unfairness are present, the appropriate remedy would be a reduction of sentence or payment of compensation.

The distinction between the forms of unfairness is important. If a person cannot be tried fairly, then he cannot be tried at all: this is axiomatic, as Lord Bingham said at para 15 of Spiers v Ruddy.

The other form of unfairness, not discussed in the case, would presumably be the public policy form of unfairness, which really means that continuation of the proceedings would bring the administration of justice into disrepute. Public policy fairness has broad application. I have mentioned public policy fairness in discussing Simmons v R (Bahamas) 4 April 2006 and Williams v R (Jamaica) 26 April 2006.

Of interest here is the mention of reduction of sentence as a remedy for undue delay. It is possible that reduction of sentence (which, obviously, is only applicable if the case proceeds to sentencing) could be a more widely used remedy for breach of rights. One of the factors that New Zealand’s new Evidence Act 2006 mentions as relevant to the decision whether to exclude improperly obtained evidence is the existence of alternative remedies that can adequately provide redress: s 30(3)(f).

"Never mind your alibi, put the balaclava on ..."

Where errors at trial meant that it could not be said that guilt was proved beyond reasonable doubt, the conviction had to be quashed and there was no question of whether the proviso should be applied: Evans v R [2007] HCA 59 (13 December 2007) at para 10 of the joint majority judgment of Gummow and Hayne JJ. A confusing aspect of this case is its references to the proviso. This is hardly surprising, given the state of the law. There were several differences between the judges on other points too.

The critical errors at trial were two, and they focused on two different sorts of evidence. The first was evidence of clothing that the accused was required by the prosecutor to wear while sitting in the witness box, and the second was evidence that the accused was not permitted to call in the nature of an alibi.

As to the clothing, the majority held that was an error, but Gummow and Hayne JJ (jointly) differed from the third member of the majority, Kirby J, as to what the error was. The joint judgment held that the evidence of what the accused looked like wearing the clothing was irrelevant and inadmissible for that reason. Kirby J found this reasoning objectionable because the point had not been argued and (para 84) “This Court does not enjoy a roving commission to create new grounds of appeal”. But, on this point of relevance, Kirby J agreed with Heydon J (with whom Crennan J also agreed) that the evidence was relevant. However, in Kirby J’s view, the evidence was inadmissible because its illegitimately prejudicial effect outweighed its probative value (para 108):

“…The complaint is that the prosecutor's questions made him sit, in the jury's presence, in a garb often associated with armed robberies; inescapably similar to the appearance of the offender shown on the video film and photographic stills; and necessarily looking sinister and criminal-like. Even if glanced at for a moment, such an image (like images of hijackers, terrorists and murderers in well-remembered films, documentaries and news broadcasts) would etch an eidetic imprint on the jury's collective mind. It is an image unfairly prejudicial to the appellant.”

The second critical error, excluding the evidence of alibi (notice not having being given), was the subject of agreement between Gummow, Hayne and Kirby JJ. The error resulted in the defence not being able to be fully put at trial. The defence had to explain why a cap containing the accused’s DNA had been recovered from the scene of the robbery. The only innocent explanation, in the circumstances, could have been that it had been planted there by the actual robber. This possibility could have been raised if the jury had heard the alibi evidence, although it only went as far as establishing that at the relevant time the accused was routinely at a distant location and no departure from that routine could be remembered.

The dissenters, Heydon and Crennan JJ, approached this point differently, holding that there was no evidentiary support for the suggestion that the cap had been planted at the scene, so the absence of the alibi evidence did not matter. This, one might think, misses the point that it was the alibi evidence that would have been relied on to support an inference of planting.

Heydon J, in a passage (para 189 – 222) with which Kirby and Crennan JJ agreed, discussed the concepts of views, demonstrations and reconstructions at common law, and the statutory references to inspections, demonstrations and experiments in the uniform evidence legislation. Kirby J disagreed with Heydon J’s holding on the status of the in-court wearing of the clothing here: Kirby J held it to be a demonstration at common law (para 107).

There was some mention of how the proviso should be approached in the light of Weiss v R (blogged here 16 January 2006). Kirby J mentioned the aspects that seem to be uncontroversial (para 116 – 118):

“116 The central holding in Weiss, which followed suggestions to similar effect in relation to the role of appellate courts both in criminal … and civil … appeals, was that the appellate function must, in every case, be discharged by the intermediate court for itself. It must be done by reference to principles derived from the statutory language. It is not to be discharged by incantations involving speculation concerning what the jury or judge at trial (or a future jury or judge) would, or might, or should have done if this or that had happened or not happened. About this much, there is, I believe, unanimity in this Court. It has emphasised the very substantial role and duty of appellate courts to review the evidence and to reach conclusions for themselves by the application of the statutory tests.

“117 There is also unanimity (for the possibility is expressly reserved in Weiss …) that there may be cases where "errors or miscarriages of justice occurring in the course of a criminal trial may amount to such a serious breach of the presuppositions of the trial as to deny the application of the … proviso".

“118 Beyond these points, there remain questions that I regard as still alive for final resolution if tendered to this Court in a suitable case. In a sense, those questions may be a product of the "conundrum" which the joint reasons in this appeal recognise as appearing on the face of the common form legislation in which criminal appeal jurisdiction is expressed throughout this country…. Elsewhere and earlier, the "conundrum" was described as "a riddle of the kind which Plutarch records caused Homer to die of chagrin"….”[footnotes omitted]

Part of the difficulty is the tangled language that is used to state the position. The joint judgment in the present case, at para 41 – 42, highlights and indeed endorses, a particularly complex passage in Weiss. Nonetheless, the position here was that (para 48 – 49):

“48 Because the alibi evidence was not called and was not tested at trial, the Court of Criminal Appeal could not decide from the record of the trial and the additional material received on the hearing of the appeal that the appellant was proved beyond reasonable doubt to be guilty of the offences on which the jury returned its verdicts of guilty. It could not do that because the material upon which it had to act was incomplete. An important element of the material had been excluded at trial and was necessarily presented to the Court of Criminal Appeal untested. Because it was untested the Court of Criminal Appeal could not say whether it could be taken at less than its face value. And at face value it left an issue about who took the cap to the scene and dropped it there not capable of resolution beyond reasonable doubt.

“49 The Court of Criminal Appeal could not determine beyond reasonable doubt that the appellant was the robber. The errors at trial both undermined his defence and in an important respect prevented him putting it fully. The sworn evidence the appellant had given may well have been undermined by having him dress as the robber. The alibi evidence it had to consider was necessarily incomplete.

“50 It is not then necessary to go on to decide what significance should be attached to the several features of the trial that suggest that the trial judge did not have sufficient mastery of the proceedings to ensure a fair trial. That is, it is not necessary to explore what kinds of failure in the trial process preclude the application of the proviso, beyond noting that in Weiss the Court said … that "no single universally applicable criterion can be formulated which identifies cases in which it would be proper for an appellate court not to dismiss the appeal, even though persuaded that the evidence properly admitted at trial proved, beyond reasonable doubt, the accused's guilt". [footnote omitted]

“51 These issues need not be resolved in this matter. They need not be resolved because the errors made at trial undermined the appellant's defence and prevented him putting it fully. The Court of Criminal Appeal ought not to have decided that the appellant had been proved beyond reasonable doubt guilty of the offences charged. The Court of Criminal Appeal ought not to have decided that there had been no substantial miscarriage of justice.”

This seems to mean that the appellate court should have decided that the miscarriage of justice here was substantial, and that therefore the proviso could not apply. If so, this contradicts claim in para 10 of the joint judgment, mentioned above at the beginning of this commentary, that no question arose as to whether the proviso should be applied. There was a question, and it should have been answered in the negative. I have noted many cases on the proviso (see Index), and no doubt will continue to do so. There are differences in the ways courts interpret it, and these tend to arise from the concepts of “miscarriage” of justice, and “substantial miscarriage” of justice. The juxtaposition of these concepts creates the conundrum mentioned here. In my view, the straightforward approach seems to be that the accused in the present case had not had a fair trial, because he was not allowed to present his defence, and because unfairly prejudicial evidence had been adduced. Those errors caused unfairness in that the determination of the facts was biased against the accused. Since the trial was not fair, the conviction could not be saved by the proviso.

Firearm "use" in drug transactions

Some gems from Watson v US No.06-571, 10 December 2007:

“we do not normally speak or write the Government’s way.” per Souter J, delivering the Court’s judgment in Watson, and quoting Lopez v. Gonzales, 549 U. S. (2006) (slip op., at 5).

“The Government may say that a person “uses” a firearm simply by receiving it in a barter transaction, but no one else would.” Souter J.

“I would overrule Smith, and thereby render our precedent both coherent and consistent with normal usage. Cf. Henslee v. Union Planters Nat. Bank & Trust Co., 335 U. S. 595, 600 (1949) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting) (“Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late.”).” per Ginsburg J, concurring in Watson.

In Watson, the Supreme Court granted certiorari to resolve a conflict in the Circuit Courts over whether a person “uses” a firearm when he trades drugs in order to obtain a gun.

I have previously noted an interpretation of the word “use”(see blog on 23 July 2007 concerning R v Steele SCC and mentioning Bailey v US) where the issue was whether a gun had been used in the commission of a crime, when its presence was revealed to a victim.

In Watson, the issue, relevant to sentencing, was whether in giving drugs and receiving in exchange a gun the offender had used the gun in the drug trafficking crime. In Smith v. United States, 508 U. S. 223 (1993) it had been held that giving a gun in exchange for drugs was using the firearm. Ginsburg J, as noted above, would have overruled that decision, but the other members of the Court did not think it was necessary to do so, and held that Smith simply did not address the present issue.

The interpretative problem was addressed in this way: “With no statutory definition or definitive clue, the meaning of the verb “uses” has to turn on the language as we normally speak it”. Unsurprisingly, the result was that a gun is not used in the commission of a drug trafficking offence by the person who receives the gun in exchange for the drugs. As Ginsburg J rather wittily put it, “It is better to receive than to give, the Court holds today, at least when the subject is guns.”

Techniques of judicial reasoning are illustrated here in the Court’s treatment of the prosecution’s arguments. I summarise the arguments here, although this may not be particularly intelligible, but it is the form of argument that I am highlighting.

The Government argued that an interpretative clue was provided by a nearby provision in the statute, and also that symmetry favoured its view ( ie both parties to the transaction are responsible for the danger to society posed by the use of the firearm; the danger recognised in Smith was reciprocated here).

The Court dismissed the context point on the ground that the other provision was too vague about who the user of the firearm would be in a transaction and this meant there was no pressure to apply the same meaning to the present provision; and, in any event, applying the same meaning in the different contexts would require overruling an earlier decision - Bailey v. United States, 516 U. S. 137 (1995) – which was unanimous and not challenged by the Government.

The symmetry argument was dismissed on the ground that, not only did it strain language, but also it was weakened by the Government’s pointing out that, in any event, receiving the gun in exchange for drugs would (at least in the Government’s view, the Court left the point open) be within another section which covered possessing a firearm in furtherance of a drug transaction. This “does leave the appeal to symmetry under-whelming in a contest with the English language, on the Government’s very terms.”

Policy v Logic

R v Daley [2007] SCC 53 (13 December 2007) calls to mind the different approaches that have been taken to the problems for criminal responsibility that are raised by the accused’s state of intoxication during the commission of what is alleged to be an offence.

The tension between policy and logic has been resolved differently in various jurisdictions.

The policy originating in English law has been adopted and developed in Canada. Fundamentally, this involves distinguishing (controversially) between offences of specific intent, and offences of basic intent. Intoxication is not, as a matter of policy, an impediment to liability for an offence of basic intent. It will, however, be relevant to whether the accused is liable for an offence of specific intent. This is discussed in Daley at paras 34 – 53.

In New Zealand the tension between policy and logic is resolved in favour of logic. The focus is on whether the mental element necessary for liability for the relevant offence was present. The position is summarised in Adams on Criminal Law, CA23.50:

“For the history of defences based on intoxication: see Singh (1933) 49 LQR 528; and for a review of the law in New Zealand: see the Criminal Law Reform Committee, Report on Intoxication as a Defence to a Criminal Charge (1984). The applicable principles are the same whether the defendant was affected by alcohol or by other drugs, or both: R v Lipman [1970] 1 QB 152; DPP v Majewski [1977] AC 443; [1976] 2 All ER 142 (HL); Viro v R (1978) 141 CLR 88; compare R v Hardie [1984] 3 All ER 848; CA23.52. The basic rule is that intoxication is never in itself a defence: R v Kamipeli [1975] 2 NZLR 610 (CA), at p 616; R v Munro (1986) 2 CRNZ 249 (CA); R v Doherty (1887) 16 Cox CC 306, at p 308; DPP v Beard [1920] AC 479, at p 499. It is not a defence that intoxication removed a defendant’s inhibitions and caused him or her to act in a way he or she would not have done when sober, or prevented the defendant knowing the act was wrong: A-G for Northern Ireland v Gallagher [1963] AC 349; [1961] 3 All ER 299 (HL), at p 380; p 313 per Lord Denning; R v Sheehan [1975] 1 WLR 739, at p 744. But there may be a defence if a mental element required for the offence was absent as a result of intoxication. In such a case the defence is the absence of the required mental element, not the intoxication, although the evidence which may support such a defence includes the fact of intoxication, as well as other relevant circumstances: Kamipeli (above), at p 616.”

It is not necessary, under this approach, to distinguish in law between states of intoxication such as advanced or extreme intoxication. Nor is it necessary to classify offences as involving specific or basic intent. Nor is it necessary to distort the concept of recklessness to accommodate liability for drunken lack of foresight.

Generalisations about the Australian jurisdictions must be treated with caution. Broadly, the common law jurisdictions generally take the same logical approach as in New Zealand: R v O’Connor (1980) 146 CLR 64 (HCA), although this may be modified by statute, as it is for example in South Australia by the Criminal Law Consolidation (Intoxication) Amendment Act 2004 (No 40 of 2004), s 5. This creates liability, notwithstanding absence of voluntariness or intention due to intoxication, for offences that do not require proof of foresight of consequences or awareness of surrounding circumstances. If death is caused, a different rule applies: the question becomes whether the accused was criminally negligent; if so, he may be convicted of manslaughter. In Queensland, a Code state, the logical approach is taken: see s 28 of the Criminal Code 1899.

If the logical approach may seem to offer little protection against the harm that may be caused by a person who deliberately removes himself from criminal liability by becoming intoxicated before embarking on his illegal purpose, the forensic realities may provide some reassurance. In practice, the prosecutor’s catch-phrase in such cases is, “A drunken intent is still an intent!” and this memorable formulation, usually repeated by the judge in summing up, is difficult to counter. “A drunken lack of intent is still lack of intent” is about as good a response as defence counsel can make. It may be that policy enters by the back door, through pragmatic fact-finding.

... the verdict of you all?

It is easy to agree with one, then the other, of two opposing views of a case. In WGC v R [2007] HCA 58 (12 December 2007) the first two judgments (Gummow CJ and Kirby J) come to the same conclusion and for similar reasons, and they seem entirely convincing. But they are dissenting judgments. The next judgment in the case, by Hayne and Heydon JJ, in its turn seems entirely convincing, although it comes to the opposite conclusion. By the time I get to Crennan J’s judgment – and she now has the disposition of the appeal under her command – I am not surprised to see her agreement with Hayne and Heydon JJ, since that is the judgment freshest in my mind.

How can two opposite conclusions seem viable? When this occurs it may be because the difference is over a fundamental point of interpretation. This indeed was the case here, where the statutory definition of an offence raised issues over what was an element of the offence and what was a mere particular, and how the obligation placed on the defence to prove certain matters affected the identification of the elements of the offence.

At a slightly lesser level of abstraction, a question in the case involved whether the verdict of the jury may not have been unanimous. Was this a case where guilt may have been proved by two separate and independent theories, so that the jury had to agree on which one they accepted, or was this a case where the defence had to prove more than one issue, and the jury may have had different reasons for deciding that the defence had failed overall?

The offence was the sort of sexual offending that is defined variously in different jurisdictions, but broadly it was having sexual intercourse with a girl aged of or above 12 and under 17 years. The charge specified a period over which the particular offending was alleged to have occurred. The majority held that this range of dates was not an element of the charge, but was merely a particular of the offending that did not have to be proved. The minority held that the date on which the offending was alleged was an element of the charge and so had to be proved beyond reasonable doubt. The statute provided a defence if the accused proved that at the time of the intercourse the girl was aged of or over 16 and that he believed on reasonable grounds that she was of or over 17.

In this case the accused admitted having intercourse with the complainant but said it occurred several years after she claimed it did, and that at the time she was aged 16 and he had the belief necessary for the defence.

Did the accused’s stance at trial make the date of the occurrence of the intercourse an element of the offence, for the prosecution to prove? Or was his stance at trial an allegation that he made that was purely a matter of defence?

Gummow CJ held (para 7) that an accused does not make allegations. This position thus coloured his interpretation of the definition of the offence, and Kirby J’s approach was similar. In particular, Kirby J pointed out (para 92), that jurors could not reach the verdict of guilty by some members concluding that the intercourse occurred when she was under 16 (so that the statutory defence did not apply) and others concluding that it occurred when she was 16 but the accused failed to establish that he believed she was 17 and that this belief was reasonable. If the jury held such differing views they were not unanimous on when the intercourse occurred. Since, for the minority, the time of the offence was an element that had to be proved beyond reasonable doubt, the accused should have been acquitted and a new trial should have been ordered.

The majority reasoning involved a focus on what were the elements of the offence as distinct from particulars provided to assist the accused in identifying the conduct that was impugned. On the view that the accused was alleging a different date than the prosecution (Hayne and Heydon JJ at para 116), and that this allegation was simply a part of endeavouring to establish the defence, the way was clear to concluding that the date on which the offending was alleged was not, in law, an element for the prosecution to establish. What the prosecution did have to establish beyond reasonable doubt was that, at whatever time the intercourse occurred, the complainant was of or over 12 and under 17 years of age.

An important reason advanced by Hayne and Heydon JJ for this interpretation was the procedural difficulty that would arise if the date of the intercourse was an element of the offence. As there was no evidential basis for alleging intercourse at the date claimed by the accused, until the accused gave evidence, an alternative charge could not have been laid at the outset. Once the accused gave evidence, there would be a basis for alleging intercourse with a girl aged 16, but if the indictment was amended by adding that count, the accused would have to be given the opportunity to plead to it and, more significantly, to cross-examine prosecution witnesses again. That muddle (which, it must be said, seems to be an overstatement of the difficulties in how the situation could have been managed: the accused, always aware of his case, would be expected to put it to the witnesses as they gave their evidence the first time: see the rule in Browne v Dunn, blogged here 12 December 2005 and 23 March 2007) is avoided if the count in the indictment is read as not specifying the date as an element and as capable of covering both versions of the facts.

As to the opacity of the verdict point (how could the basis for the jury’s verdict be ascertained for sentencing purposes?), the majority held that this is not an unusual situation: there may be different reasons for the failure of the defence, and the Judge could make his own assessment of the facts on sentencing.

So, it all came down to a difference over whether the date was an element of the offence. The minority interpretation was that the date was an element because it had particular legal consequences: if intercourse occurred when the complainant said it did, the statutory defence relied on here did not apply, but if it occurred when the accused said it did, then the defence did apply. This was a matter on which, in the minority view, the jury needed to be unanimous. Kirby J reviewed the law in New Zealand (para 87 et seq), Canada (88 – 89) and England (90), emphasising the need for the members of a jury to agree on the theory of guilt (or, the factual basis for guilt).

I have discussed this case without quoting the statutory provision which was in issue, s 49(3) and (4) of the Criminal Law Consolidation Act 1935 (SA), because it is the consequences for the shapes of arguments that arise from each alternative interpretation that is of interest here. Depending on what the elements of the offence are, there may be difficulties with jury unanimity.

The lawfulness of police helpfulness

Where do the police get their powers to be helpful?

In Ngan v R [2007] NZSC 105 (13 December 2007) the appellant was injured when his car overturned, and the police, after he had identified himself, arranged for him to be taken to hospital. Then, to clear up the accident scene, the police gathered items, including banknotes that had been scattered, and, in the course of inspecting the contents of a zipped pouch that appeared to be a sunglasses case, they discovered drugs. The purpose in taking possession of the items was to safeguard them for the owner, and the reason for opening the pouch was to make an inventory of items, also in the owner’s interests. The appellant had unsuccessfully objected to the admissibility at his trial of the evidence of the finding of the drugs.

Unsurprisingly, the Supreme Court unanimously held that the evidence was admissible. Four Judges held that there had been a search, when the pouch was unzipped, but McGrath J dissented on this point (para 101 – 117). Tipping J assumed that there had been a search, as the prosecution had not argued to the contrary, and held that the police conduct was not even prima facie unlawful as they were simply doing what any private citizen would have been entitled to do in undertaking the role of a bailee of necessity (para 44 - 54). However, in a joint judgment Elias CJ, Blanchard and Anderson JJ (delivered by Blanchard J) held that there was prima facie illegality because the police are bound by stricter standards than ordinary citizens (para 14, applying R v Waterfield [1964] 1 QB 164, 170). However, as Blanchard J put it, para 21:

“The difference in approach to Waterfield taken in these reasons from that taken in the reasons of Tipping J appears to turn on to what amounts to a prima facie unlawful interference with property. As we consider that the police conducted a search of the pouch, we take the view that prima facie there was such an interference. But it was justified in terms of Waterfield. However, the difference in approach has no practical significance because it has been overtaken by the requirements of the Bill of Rights Act.”

All five Judges agreed that pursuant to the Bill of Rights the search was reasonable and there was no reason to exclude the evidence (McGrath J indicated his agreement – if contrary to his view there was a search – at para 121). This reasonableness extended beyond the use of the information about the contents of the pouch for inventory purposes, to use as evidence of drug offending.

There was some discussion of North American authorities, as the appellant had sought to rely on them to support restriction of reasonableness to the making of an inventory. R v Caslake [1998] 1 SCR 51 was held (para 23) not to be authority for the proposition that an inventory search is unlawful because an inventory may be taken in the interests of the owner and not for police purposes. It was noted that subsequent Canadian cases have applied the Waterfield approach (R v Mann [2004] 3 SCR 59; R v Clayton and Farmer 2007 SCC 32). R v Colarusso [1994] 1 SCR 20 was also relied on by the appellant, but was distinguished (para 34) on the ground that in that case the police had an unlawful initial purpose, whereas here their purpose in carrying out the inventory was lawful. The New Zealand case R v Salmond [1992] 3 NZLR 8 (CA) was also relied on by the appellant, but was distinguished on similar grounds (para 36).

So, the answer to the question where the police get their powers to be helpful, depends on statute and common law. McGrath J was the only member of the Court who sought to go beyond that to a “residual third source of authority” (para 96), but one might respectfully wonder whether that is usefully distinct from the fundamental rule in a free society that everything is lawful except that which is prohibited by law.

At para 14 Blanchard J (with Elias CJ and Anderson J) put the central idea as follows:

“Notwithstanding that police officers may be expected to intervene in a case like the present, any interference with private liberty or property by the police is unlawful unless it can be justified either “by the text of the statute law, or by the principles of common law” [Entick v Carrington (1765) 19 How St Tr 1029 at p 1066]. An interference with property in the form of a search of the pouch occurred in this case. But was it unlawful? In order to determine whether a particular course of conduct was actually unlawful, it has been said in R v Waterfield to be relevant [[1964] 1 QB 164 at p 170. See also Hoffman v Thomas [1974] 1 WLR 374]:

“to consider whether (a) such conduct falls within the general scope of any duty imposed by statute or recognised at common law and (b) whether such conduct, albeit within the general scope of such a duty, involved an unjustifiable use of powers associated with the duty.”

“There may be less justification for any use of such powers where the conduct is not in pursuance of an “absolute” duty and where the apprehended danger is to property rather than persons. Overall, as Cooke P stressed in Minto v Police, “[t]he citizen’s protection lies in the insistence of the law that the steps should be reasonable” [[1987] 1 NZLR 374 at p 378 (CA). Further relevant considerations include the immediacy and potential seriousness of the apprehended danger: Police v Amos [1977] 2 NZLR 564 at p 568 at pp 568 – 569].”


Since the police had decided, “reasonably and therefore lawfully” (para 15) to take on the obligations analogous to those of a bailee, for the benefit of the owner, and since they had done no more than was reasonably necessary to safeguard the property (para 20 – 21), there was no unlawfulness or unreasonableness in their discovery of the drugs.