Pressures of work and difficult clients

Just a small note today on an illustration of how some sorts of delay can be attributable to the accused, not to the prosecution: Vermont v Brillon [2009] USSC 9 March 2009.

Here there was a three year delay before trial, two years of which were wrongly attributed by the Vermont Supreme Court to the State. These were caused by multiple changes of assigned counsel (at least six) who had difficulties in continuing to act: Mr Brillon fired one, allegedly threatened another's life, and dismissed another for alleged incompetence (no judicial finding was made on that). Not all the changes in counsel were the fault of Mr Brillon, and for some periods he was without assigned counsel. There was, however, no systemic breakdown of the public defender service.

The United States Supreme Court applied the ad hoc balancing exercise required by Barker v. Wingo, 407 U. S. 514 (1972), and held that the Vermont court had made the error of attributing to the state the failure of several assigned counsel to move the case forward, and had failed adequately to take into account the effect of Mr Brillon's disruptive behaviour.

The difficulty with attributing to the State the delays due to requests by assigned counsel for continuances due to their heavy workloads was (held the US SC) that this would become an avenue by which such counsel could seek dismissal on delay grounds, and the courts would come to treat requests for continuances by assigned counsel with skepticism. Then, assigned counsel would be treated differently from privately instructed counsel.

The US Supreme Court held that there would have been no delay issue here if Mr Brillon had not dismissed his first counsel on the eve of trial, and if he had not acted aggressively to his third counsel. The six month period during which he was without counsel was insufficient to base a delay application. The case was remanded to the Vermont court for further proceedings not inconsistent with the USSC's opinion.

We all occasionally have clients who are demanding out of all proportion to the fee their cases will bring. Many unpaid hours can be devoted to ensuring proper instructions are received and proper advice is given. Is it right to pretend that publicly funded counsel have the same ability to tolerate the inevitable frustrations as privately instructed counsel? A State will often be assiduous to restrict the billable hours of its publicly funded lawyers, and, where these are salaried counsel, to maximise their workloads. The courts should be sensitive to detecting when those policies amount to systemic failure.

Equinox challenge reminder

You, diligent reader of these blogs, will remember the equinox challenge. The point is to practise your advocacy skills by explaining something complex in as simple a way as possible. Simple enough for a jury to understand.

Never mind, for the purposes of this challenge, that a judge would take judicial notice of the matter. Some judges might not.

The task is to explain why the sun rises at equinox due east for all observers (except those few people at or near the poles, who can be ignored for the purposes of this Level One exercise).

Pretend you are briefing an expert witness who will explain this to the jury. Get the witness to avoid technical jargon as much as possible.

Equinox is due soon: 20^th March 1144hrs GMT. I will post my answer – which will not necessarily be the best answer – a few hours before the moment of equinox (which will be at 0044hrs on the 21^st here in Auckland, as we will still be in summer time).

Reverse onus and standard of proof

Reverse onus provisions for establishing a defence can conflict with the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, as was seen in Hansen v R [2007] NZSC 7 (blogged here 20 February 2007).

That case drew Parliament's attention to s 6(6) Misuse of Drugs Act 1975[NZ], and the words "presumed until the contrary is proved" were held to put the burden of proof to the standard of the balance of probabilities on the accused.

It was not possible, held the Court in Hansen, to interpret this phrase as meaning until the accused raises a reasonable doubt about whether he or she had the proscribed purpose.

No doubt the New Zealand Law Commission, which is currently reviewing the legislation concerning serious drug offending, will be looking around for a way to formulate the statutory defence of absence of purpose of supply without raising a conflict with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990. That is, assuming that the possession for supply offences remain: an alternative would be to replace them with offences of possession of traffickable quantities of drugs.

Legislation that provides a potentially useful analogy was considered yesterday by the House of Lords in R v G [2009] UKHL 13 (4 March 2009). The offences created by sections 57 and 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000[UK] were analysed here, with reference to how the defences in s 118 applied to them.

The offences involve possession, so there is an interesting discussion of what possession is in this context: see paras 46 – 48, 50, 53, and 60 – 62. In particular, the ingredient of knowledge of the nature of the information in one's possession, for the s 58 offence, was held to be akin to that required in the famous old case Sweet v Parsley [1970] AC 132 (HL).

Sections 57(2) and 58(3) of the Terrorism Act 2000[UK] create defences if the person charged proves certain things. For what "proves" means, reference must be made to s 118(2):

"If the person adduces evidence which is sufficient to raise an issue with respect to the matter the court or jury shall assume that the defence is satisfied unless the prosecution proves beyond reasonable doubt that it is not."

And s 118(4):

"(4) If evidence is adduced which is sufficient to raise an issue with respect to the matter mentioned in subsection (3)(a) or (b) the court shall treat it as proved unless the prosecution disproves it beyond a reasonable doubt."

This is statutory recognition of the idea that the raising of an issue can amount to proof. The evidential burden is treated as a legal burden. In Hansen the Supreme Court held that "proves" cannot mean "raises a reasonable doubt", for reasons too mysterious to discern. Actually, that’s a bit dismissive. The Court held that this meaning was not available because of Parliament’s intent in 1975, because of there being only two recognised standards of proof, because raising an issue is just testing the proposition, not proving anything, and because the expression “the contrary” in the phrase “until the contrary is proved” indicates that more than merely testing the proposition is required. In effect the Court was not prepared to revise the statute by reading in a provision like s 118, above.

Watching the river flow

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day ...

Unaccountable official delay in determining the appeal occurred in Elaheebocus v The State of Mauritius (Mauritius) [2009] UKPC 5 (25 February 2009). The case was not complex, and none of the delay was attributable to the appellant. The Supreme Court took 19 months between hearing the appeal and dismissing it. The judgment that was eventually delivered was brief, and the Privy Council noted (13) that the appeal had been hopeless and it could have been dealt with ex tempore. This 19 month delay (which was followed by a further 17 month delay before the Supreme Court refused the appellant's application for leave to appeal to the Privy Council) amounted to a breach of the constitutional guarantee of a hearing within a reasonable time.

A symbolic remedy was required. The Board was plainly tempted to simply hold that its decision finding a breach would be sufficient, but on balance it decided to make a modest reduction in the sentence: four years' imprisonment was reduced by six months.

The appellant had been on bail since before his trial, and naturally enough – as his case was apparently hopeless [Macbeth again: " ... full of sound and fury, signifying nothing"] – he had done nothing to hurry things along, such as asking when he might hear the result of his appeal (20); but he was not at fault for that: the delay was a matter of constitutional significance for which the authorities were responsible.

In addressing delay the Board applied the approach in Boolell v The State (Mauritius) [2006] UKPC 46 (blogged here 18 October 2006): three questions must be asked: is the case complex, has the defendant contributed to the delay, and has there been delay by the authorities?

Some of the delay in the present case didn't count because it occurred to accommodate the appellant's counsel's commitments: this was a three year period between the trial and the appeal to the Supreme Court.

Strasbourg approves the special advocate procedure

The special advocate procedure has received endorsement from the Strasbourg Court: A v United Kingdom [2009] ECHR 301 (19 February 2009).

The special advocate procedure may be resorted to where it is inappropriate to permit a party to the proceedings to know the full extent of the evidence against him. How can the proceedings be made procedurally fair?

Here the issue was whether there were the necessary reasonable grounds to continue the appellants' (referred to as the applicants here) detention under legislation aimed at preventing terrorist activity. The tribunal, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) had full access to the evidence. Some of the evidence was "closed" – not disclosed – and a special advocate was given full access to it in order to make submissions to SIAC on behalf of the applicants to test its reliability. Of course it would be necessary to devise some means of allowing the special advocate to obtain relevant instructions from the applicants. So each case turned on its own facts as far as the issue of procedural fairness was concerned.

The Grand Chamber's remarks on the special advocate procedure are at paras 209-217. The important general principle is in para 218:

"... it was essential that as much information about the allegations and evidence against each applicant was disclosed as was possible without compromising national security or the safety of others. Where full disclosure was not possible, [fairness] required that the difficulties this caused were counterbalanced in such a way that each applicant still had the possibility effectively to challenge the allegations against him."

This does not mean that the party who does not receive full disclosure must be satisfied with a lesser degree of fairness than would otherwise apply.

Here the Grand Chamber found, obviously without going into a lot of detail, that there had been breaches of fairness in respect of some of the applicants. For one group unfairness arose because the link between their financial activities and al'Qaeda was not disclosed so they could not challenge it. For another, the main evidence against them was in closed material and the evidence to which they had access was insubstantial and of no assistance to them in challenging the relevant allegation.

For other references to the special advocate procedure, see the Index to these blogs. An important House of Lords case is R v H [2004] UKHL 3 (pre-dating the start of this site), which I have discussed in "Public interest immunity and fairness to the accused" [2004] NZLJ 301. The special advocate procedure was designed to achieve the absolute standard of fairness to the accused that was required by that case.

Abuse of process fundamentals

There is a small part of the brief judgment of the High Court of Australia in PNJ v R [2009] HCA 6 (10 February 2009) that is of interest to us all.

It concerns the concept of abuse of process, and is as follows (3):

"It is not possible to describe exhaustively what will constitute an abuse of process [Batistatos v Roads and Traffic Authority of New South Wales [2006] HCA 27; (2006) 226 CLR 256 at 265-267 [9]- [15] per Gleeson CJ, Gummow, Hayne and Crennan JJ; [2006] HCA 27.]. It may be accepted, however, that many cases of abuse of process will exhibit at least one of three characteristics [Rogers v The Queen [1994] HCA 42; (1994) 181 CLR 251 at 286 per McHugh J; [1994] HCA 42. See also Batistatos [2006] HCA 27; (2006) 226 CLR 256 at 267 [15] per Gleeson CJ, Gummow, Hayne and Crennan JJ.]:

(a) the invoking of a court's processes for an illegitimate or collateral purpose;

(b) the use of the court's procedures would be unjustifiably oppressive to a party; or

(c) the use of the court's procedures would bring the administration of justice into disrepute."

Indeed so.

Unfair, secret and too long

A fair trial is one where the law is accurately applied to facts that are determined without partiality. The partiality aspect of a fair hearing was examined in Olujic v Croatia [2009] ECHR 209 (5 February 2009).

As can be seen from the Index to this site, there are many decisions in which senior appellate courts have considered trial fairness. Olujic v Croatia applies principles that would be universally accepted. This case concerns the proceedings of a disciplinary tribunal which led to the dismissal from office of a judge of the country's most senior court.

Breaches of the Convention occurred in respect of two associated rights: the proceedings had been too lengthy (over 6 years to determine the employment future of the applicant who was a senior judge): para 90 – 91. Also the hearings had not occurred in public (70 – 76). The link to fairness is apparent from the need for public confidence (70):

" ... The public character of proceedings protects litigants against the administration of justice in secret with no public scrutiny; it is also one of the means whereby confidence in the courts can be maintained. By rendering the administration of justice visible, publicity contributes to the achievement of the aim of Article 6 § 1, a fair hearing, the guarantee of which is one of the foundations of a democratic society (see Sutter v. Switzerland, 22 February 1984, § 26, Series A no. 74 )."

On the central requirements of fair proceedings, violations were also found. Some members of the tribunal (the National Judicial Council) had publicly expressed views in newspaper interviews, given before the hearings were concluded, which indicated they were biased against the applicant.

The importance of impartiality has both a public perspective and a party perspective, and requires consideration of the judge's subjective interests and of the objective impression that was conveyed:

"57. First and foremost, it is of fundamental importance in a democratic society that the courts inspire confidence in the public and above all, as far as criminal proceedings are concerned, in the accused (see Padovani v. Italy, 26 February 1993, § 27, Series A no. 257-B). To that end Article 6 requires a tribunal falling within its scope to be impartial. Impartiality normally denotes absence of prejudice or bias and its existence can be tested in various ways. The Court has thus distinguished between a subjective approach, that is endeavouring to ascertain the personal conviction or interest of a given judge in a particular case, and an objective approach, that is determining whether he or she offered sufficient guarantees to exclude any legitimate doubt in this respect (see Piersack v. Belgium, 1 October 1982, § 30, Series A no. 53, and Grieves v. the United Kingdom [GC], no. 57067/00, § 69, ECHR 2003-XII)."

The subjective and objective tests are interrelated (60) and both may apply on particular facts. Here the Chamber found there were objective grounds to fear lack of impartiality arising from the public statements that three members of the tribunal had made (65 – 68).

Another aspect of fairness was breached: there had been lack of equality of arms, because the tribunal had refused to hear defence evidence. Whereas the ECtHR does not have jurisdiction over the rules of admissibility applicable in member States,

"77. ... the requirements of fairness of the proceedings include the way in which the evidence is taken and submitted. The Court's task is to ascertain whether the proceedings in their entirety, including the way in which evidence was taken and submitted, were fair within the meaning of Article 6 § 1 (see, inter alia, Dombo Beheer B.V. v. the Netherlands, 27 October 1993, § 31, Series A no. 274)."

Here the proposed defence evidence was relevant to advancing a denial of the allegations against the applicant (81), and the tribunal's reasons for refusing to hear the evidence were inadequate. The ECtHR's jurisdiction arose from the impact of inequality of arms on the fairness of the hearing:

"84. The Court observes further that, although it is not its task to examine whether the court's refusal to admit the evidence submitted by the applicant was well-founded, in its assessment of compliance of the procedure in question with the principle of equality of arms, which is a feature of the wider concept of a fair trial (see Ekbatani v. Sweden, 26 May 1988, § 30, Series A no. 134), significant importance is attached to appearances and to the increased sensitivity of the public to the fair administration of justice (see Borgers v. Belgium, 30 October 1991, § 24, Series A no. 214 B). In this connection the Court notes that the NJC admitted all the proposals to hear evidence from the witnesses nominated by the counsel for the Government and none of the proposals submitted by the applicant."

The refusal to hear the evidence here was another violation of the right to a fair hearing.

This astonishing catalogue of fundamental errors by a tribunal and its members - persons elected from among the members of the judiciary, the State Attorney's Office, the Croatian Bar Association and law professors, all of whom were persons of high standing - highlights the ease with which a sense of balance can be lost when a case involves high public interest.

The more people in the audience, the more likely it is the juggler will drop the balls.

Extended secondary liability in Queensland

Extended secondary liability was the subject of R v Keenan [2009] HCA 1 (2 February 2009). The High Court of Australia was here considering s 8 of the Criminal Code (Q):

"When 2 or more persons form a common intention to prosecute an unlawful purpose in conjunction with one another, and in the prosecution of such purpose an offence is committed of such a nature that its commission was a probable consequence of the prosecution of such purpose, each of them is deemed to have committed the offence."

This sort of liability has common law and statutory forms, and it is important to notice the aspects of the definition that differentiate it from others. Here the phrase "of such a nature" and the objective nature of the probability ("was a probable consequence", not the subjective formulation "was known to be a probable consequence") are significant. An example of a different formulation is s 66(2) Crimes Act 1961[NZ].

In Keenan an alleged common purpose of inflicting serious physical harm on the victim was followed by the use of a gun by one of the offenders to cause grievous bodily harm to the victim. Was Mr Keenan, the respondent in this appeal, correctly convicted of doing grievous bodily harm with intent to do that harm, pursuant to s 8, if use of a gun was not part of the common purpose?

For discussion of the common law, see Rahman [2008] UKHL 45 (blogged here 3 July 2008). Kirby J (dissenting) preferred not to interpret s 8 in a way that would depart from the common law, which left to the jury the task of determining the boundary of secondary liability in the particular circumstances.

The other members of the Court held that it is not the way that the harm is caused that matters (the fact that it was by use of a gun) but rather it is the nature of the harm that was caused (grievous bodily harm). Then the questions are, what was the common purpose, and was the offence that occurred (in a generic sense, not the precise acts) a probable consequence of the prosecution of that purpose. As Hayne J pointed out (83), this gives effect to the phrase "of such a nature", whereas Kirby J's interpretation would focus on the way the offence was committed and ask whether that was a probable consequence of the prosecution of the common purpose. Kiefel J (with whom all the majority agreed) held (115) that the act involved in the commission of the offence is not part of the connection between the common purpose and the offence.

Kirby J supports his dissent with policy grounds (66), emphasising the importance of the jury's role as the setter of the boundaries of liability in accordance with community values.

Rights restriction or deprivation: pragmatic balancing

When is a restriction on movement a deprivation of liberty?

In Austin v Commissioner of Police for the Metropolice [2009] UKHL 5 (28 January 2009) crowd control during a May day demonstration in London was the setting for an argument that confinement of the appellants within a police designated zone at Oxford Circus for several hours was a breach of their art 5 ECHR right to "liberty and security of the person".

Lord Hope delivered the leading opinion, with which the other Law Lords agreed. Whether particular facts amount to a restriction of movement, or to a breach of the right to liberty, is a matter of degree and intensity (21) to which a balancing of conflicting interests applies (27), taking a pragmatic approach which requires good faith and proportionality on the part of the authorities so as to avoid arbitrariness (34).

Some slight – and probably inconsequential - difference in emphasis occurred in the opinions concerning the role of the purpose that the authorities had for restricting the appellants' movement. Lord Hope noted that purpose had no separate role to play in the balancing exercise other than as part of this requirement for good faith. Lord Walker emphasised (43) that caution was needed as to the role of purpose, as good intentions couldn't make up for a deficiency in justification for confinement (44), but the focus should be on what the police were doing (47). Lord Scott said that purpose was a high ranking circumstance (39), and Lord Neuberger noted that it would be very different if the police had been detaining the crowd in order to punish them for the disorder that had occurred (63).

There is a small cause for concern over an aspect of this case. The right to liberty was called an "absolute" right (Lord Hope at 2, 15, 18; Lord Walker at 42). That is not a term of art in the Convention. Strictly speaking, the right to liberty is unqualified (except for the qualifications expressed in particular specified situations) but is subject to derogation in accordance with art 15. While the right to liberty can be called a fundamental right of the first rank (Lord Hope at 27), does that necessarily mean that all such fundamental rights of the first rank are vulnerable to qualification by means of balancing? Most people, I suspect, would not accept that the right to a fair trial can be subject to qualification by balancing.

Unfortunately, Lord Hope refers to the right to a fair trial at 31, quoting from para 53 of O'Halloran and Francis v United Kingdom [2008] ECHR 21. This dictum points out that the facts of a case must be considered in determining whether a trial was fair (an obvious comment), but the way it is used makes it look as if it asserts that fairness changes with the circumstances. The comment was made in the course of rejecting an argument that violation of the right to silence amounted to breach of the right to a fair trial, and was plainly correct: violation of the right to silence would normally be sufficient grounds to rule an incriminating statement inadmissible. But in O'Halloran and Francis the evidence had been correctly ruled admissible; nevertheless, there were no fair trial concerns in the particular circumstances.

So, when Lord Hope refers (34) to a pragmatic balancing of fundamental rights which are not subject to restriction or limitation in the Convention, he should not, I suggest, be taken to include the right to a fair trial (except where derogation applies), but his comments correctly refer to other fundamental rights. The other Law Lords, while agreeing with Lord Hope, did not comment on the fair trial point.

I should add that the model described in Austin does not require a restriction of the right to liberty. The so-called balancing is a means of determining whether the restriction on freedom of movement is justified; if it isn’t, then there has been a breach of the right to liberty. It is not a question of restricting the right to liberty to accommodate a justified restriction on the right to freedom of movement. Analogous reasoning could make the reference to trial fairness seem acceptable: there is no question of restricting the right to a fair trial to accommodate a justified restriction on the conduct of the defence; pragmatic balancing may be applied to determine whether a restriction on the way the defence is conducted is justified, and if it is there is no breach of the right to a fair trial. The difficulty with this model is that it converts questions about the rights to liberty or a fair trial into questions about the justifications of restrictions on movement or procedure. The model omits consideration of the content of the rights to liberty or a fair trial. But if those rights warrant being called absolute it would be appropriate to examine what they mean. A justified limitation of one right (to movement or to procedural steps) does not mean that the other (liberty or a fair trial) is not infringed. I have recently referred to the House of Lords decision in R v H (see blog for 20 January 2009). In that case there is a clear separation between these questions: if procedural limitations (on disclosure) are justified, that does not automatically mean that the ensuing trial will be fair.

Austin confirms what must surely be uncontroversial: the right to liberty does not mean a right to resist reasonable measures by the police to prevent damage to property or injury to people. The real controversy was over the reasonableness of the measures taken by the police in this case.

Dealing with unsavouriness

Two cases from the Supreme Court of Canada concern the directions a judge should give to a jury on the need for caution about the evidence of an "unsavoury" witness: R v Khela [2009] SCC 4, applied in R v Smith [2009] SCC 5, both 22 January 2009.

Unsavoury witnesses "...include all witnesses who, because of their amoral character, criminal lifestyle, past dishonesty or interest in the outcome of the trial, cannot be trusted to tell the truth — even when they have expressly undertaken by oath or affirmation to do so." (3, Fish J delivering the judgment of himself and Binnie, LeBel, Abella, Charron and Rothstein JJ; Deschamps J separately concurred).

The required elements are rational and will no doubt be of interest outside Canada.

There is no precise formula, but the direction must (I summarise):

1. Identify the evidence about which the jury needs to be cautious;
   
2. Explain why caution is necessary;
   
3. Caution the jury on the danger of convicting in reliance on the testimony of the unsavoury witness, although the jury is entitled to do so if satisfied that the evidence is true; and
   
4. Instruct the jury to look for independent evidence which gives comfort that the unsavoury witness is correct (drawing attention to what evidence is capable of confirming the unsavoury witness in the relevant way).
   

 A subsidiary appeal point in Khela concerned a direction that wrongly told the jury that the defence needed to prove certain facts in order to support an inference of innocence (58). However, the Court of Appeal had correctly applied the proviso on the basis that in context the misdirection would not have made any difference to the verdicts.

The unsavoury witness directions set out here would be a good framework on which counsel might structure that part of the address to the jury. It is always a good idea to try to persuade the jury in terms that will be repeated by the judge.