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
Victoria Legal Aid have been reviewing their grants procedure recently. We wrote about some changes back here.From tomorrow, people charged in the Magistrates’ Court with traffic offences under the Road Safety Act 1986 will only be eligible for a grant of legal assistance if they have a psychiatric or intellectual disability or an acquired brain …
Edit: The SAC did publish something on their website on 6th July about mental illness in sentencing appeals, but really it was just a one page overview with a link back to the Sentence Appeals in Victoria Statistical Research Report that it had released back in March.It's possible that the information is in there in …
This is another post about Verdins. In that case, Maxwell P, Buchanan and Vincent JJA laid out six principles [at 32]: 1. The condition may reduce the moral culpability of the offending conduct, as distinct from the offender’s legal responsibility. Where that is so, the condition affects the punishment that is just in all the …
Continue reading Green v The Queen [2011] VSCA 311: just punishment, specific deterrence and Verdins
Edit: In Abdifar v The Queen [2012] VSCA 66 the Court of Appeal rejected the notion that Verdins needs to be specifically referred to by the sentencing judge in order to find that the principles had been properly considered.It is true that his Honour did not explicitly mention the extent to which he thought that …