Summer break

Christmas is rapidly approaching, and legal research is being overtaken by other priorities. (Congratulations to Stephen Warne, who received his present early this year).We'll be taking our cue from the Supreme Court's regular sittings again and having a break between 17 December and 31 January 2011. I will be checking in on the site from …

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Disclosure, adjournments and guilt — Part 2

In Part 1 of this post I discussed summary case-management and the requirements of disclosure by parties to a summary criminal prosecution, and the courts’ powers to accept or reject guilty pleas.The Criminal Procedure Act 2009 (“CP Act”) changes the old Magistrates’ Court Act 1989 Schedule 2 disclosure process a fair bit, but not necessarily …

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Notice of tendency and coincidence evidence

Section 97(1)(a) of the Evidence Act 2008 provides that tendency evidence is only admissible if,(a) the party seeking to adduce the evidence gave reasonable notice in writing to each other party of the party's intention to adduce the evidence; and(b) ...Section 98 has an identical provision for coincidence evidence. Section 99 of the Act states …

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Disclosure, adjournments and guilt — Part 1

Earlier this year I discussed Police v Beard [2010] SASC 49, an appeal against a magistrate summarily dismissing a charge because the prosecution hadn't complied with certain pre-hearing obligations.The Court there listed six points to guide summary case management.[6] The following propositions emerge from these cases.The procedure for hearing and determining a Magistrates Court matter …

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