The Criminal Bar Association emailed its members recently advising that CCOs are now a sentencing option for Commonwealth offences.The Crimes Amendment Regulation (No 2) 2012 amended the Crimes Regulations 1990. The explanatory statement helpfully sets out the need for this change:The purpose of this Regulation is to correct and simplify existing regulations 5 and 6 …
Month: March 2012
Criminal Procedure Act amendments commence
The balance of the Criminal Procedure Amendment (Double Jeopardy and Other Matters) Act 2011 commenced operation on 18 March 2012, notified in Gazette S66 of 6 March 2012. These are the amendments that occur as a result.(Right now, the Austlii version of the Criminal Procedure Act is not up-to-date — as another example of why …
Drug-driving offences
Offences under s 49 of the Road Safety Act 1986 are notorious for overlap.Since before Mills v Meeking (1990) 169 CLR 214 it has been observed that the prosecution gets significant forensic advantage from charging the same act in several different ways. (And s 51 of the Interpretation of Legislation Act 1981 allows them to …
The Queen v Getachew [2012] HCA 10: belief in consent not in issue
This case was handed down by the High Court yesterday. It's a sequel to the Victorian Court of Appeal's decision in Getachew v R [2011] VSCA 164 last year. The judgment will be studied carefully by lawyers involved in penetrative sex trials. It's a (rare) unanimous judgment by French CJ, Hayne, Crennan, Keiffel and Bell …
Continue reading The Queen v Getachew [2012] HCA 10: belief in consent not in issue
LexisNexis eBooks 2
After my sooking on the weekend about having to wait for my eBook to arrive, it lobbed into my inbox in the middle of this morning. (My excuse is that online purchasing has conditioned me to instant gratification...)I had a chance to play around with the eBook version of Bourke's Criminal Law. I've been learning …