The Victoria Police website says that Summary Case Conferencing is now going on at sittings of the Magistrates' Court across the state.This Summary Case Conference Service Charter commits the police to the following pledges:At all main metropolitan courts an ‘at court’ service will be available between 9.00am and 1.00pm.Between 2.00pm and 4.00pm the Summary Case …
Month: March 2011
When or shortly after
Hollingworth J said this in R v McDonald [2011] VSC 241 [at 16 - 18, then 56 and 57],There was a dispute as to whether some of the representations were made “shortly after” the asserted fact occurred.The phrase “shortly after” in s 65(2)(b) does not require the same degree of temporal proximity or contemporaneity as …
King v The Queen [2011] VSCA 69: expert evidence about drugs
King v The Queen [2011] VSCA 69 is an appeal of conviction and sentence for culpable driving. The conviction was upheld but the sentence was moderated to take into account strong mitigating factors.The appeal on conviction questioned the appropriateness of certain jury directions. The Court examined them in light of the previous decisions of R …
Continue reading King v The Queen [2011] VSCA 69: expert evidence about drugs
What happened to the Judicial Commission?
It has been a while since I've heard anything about our Judicial Commission. When I blogged about it in September of last year I thought the introduction of a new oversight body was inevitable. It was an idea borrowed from NSW that offered a way out from under a number of embarrassing indiscretions involving members …
'As soon as practicable'
It's a useful phrase. It doesn't mean I'll do it now and it doesn't mean I'm never going to do it. The beauty (and vice) lies in nobody knowing exactly what it means.In Legal Services Board v Werden [2011] VSC 74 the defendant, a solicitor who had ripped off his clients, successfully resisted an application …