Victoria is the last jurisdiction where an offender can appeal a decision of the Magistrates' Court to a court of intermediate appeal — here, the County Court — and the appeal is conducted as a rehearing (aka de novo appeal) rather than in the strict sense of an appeal which is a consideration of the …
Continue reading Repeal of de novo appeals deferred to 2025?
You may not write to the parent of an Australian serviceman, who lost his life in the service of his country, and compare him to a pig and dirty animal. You may not call him a a murderer of civilians, and Adolph Hitler not inferior to him in moral merit. You may not refer to …
I updated our vehicle impoundment aide mémoire to include the new indictable police pursuit offence in Crimes Act 1958 s 319AA. (That offence commenced operation on 20 December 2012: I'll discuss it in a bit more detail in a day or two.)We discussed the vehicle impoundment regime here back in June 2011.Its structure hasn't changed …
The late David Ross QC had some excellent advice for a practitioner proofing a witness (taken from his timeless book on the subject; Advocacy):"Some Bars allow you to see the client and the witnesses, and some not. If you do see them, have someone else present, speak to them one by one, suggest no line …
In Dupas v The Queen [2012] VSCA 328 the Victorian Court of Appeal, sitting as a bank of five judges, declined to follow the precedent of R v Shamouil (2006) 66 NSWLR 228, a decision of the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal. In Shamouil, a mid-trial Crown appeal on the exclusion of key prosecution evidence, …