When Julian Assange was released on bail by the Westminster Magistrates' Court last year he was released on a £240,000 surety, with a £200,000 deposit lodged. (His bail was later extended and varied, and the surety amount reduced, as he pursued avenues of appeal through the High and Supreme Courts).Now that Ecuador has granted Assange …
Month: October 2012
Where is the value in SACStat?
The Sentencing Advisory Council's new SACStat program (tweeted about by my learned colleague a few days ago) is interesting, colourful and fairly intuitive. Searches of dispositions in the Magistrates' Court are recent (2009 - 2011) and statistically significant (only offences for which at least 50 examples are available will return a result). They are an …
RWS v The Queen [2012] VSCA 249: unauthorised questioners
Section 367 of the Criminal Procedure Act 2009 provides that367. Use of recorded evidence-in-chiefA witness may give evidence-in-chief (wholly or partly) in the form of an audio or audiovisual recording of the witness answering questions put to him or her by a person prescribed by the regulations for the purposes of this section.The regulations referred …
Continue reading RWS v The Queen [2012] VSCA 249: unauthorised questioners
Bodywork
I don't usually repost or link to other sites without having much to add, but since this is a road safety message from the South Australian Motor Accident Commission, I don't think anyone will mind. The point of the campaign is obviously to get the pics in front of as many eyeballs as possible, and …
The giving of reasons
It’s trite to say that the proper exercise of a court's jurisdiction often (though not always) requires the giving of reasons for its decisions. In Shu Zhang v West Sands Pty Ltd [2010] VSC 36, Byrne J said [at 15]:It has been said again and again that the duty of a judicial officer is to …