The High Court has allowed an appeal against a decision of the Victorian Court of Appeal concerning workplace accident compensation and the connections between tasks and anticipated risks. The appellant, a primary school teacher, was injured after falling from a small step-ladder while removing artwork from a wall at the school. Regulation 3.1.2 of the Occupational Health and Safety Regulations 2007 (Vic) requires that an employer ensure that the risk of a musculoskeletal disorder ‘associated with’ a Continue reading
Daily Archives: 24 August 2016
Sio v The Queen
The High Court has allowed an appeal against a decision of the New South Wales Court of Criminal Appeal on the unreasonableness of a conviction for armed robbery with wounding in light of that conviction’s inconsistency with an acquittal for murder, and on the use of a convicted criminal’s statements to police in convicting an accomplice. At trial, the appellant was acquitted of murder, but convicted of one count of armed robbery with wounding for his role in the robbery of a brothel by his co-offender, who stabbed and killed an employee of the brothel. The co-offender had made a statement to police that alleged the appellant had driven and encouraged him to commit the robbery, but did not testify at the defendant’s trial. The NSWCCA held that Continue reading
Miller v The Queen; Smith v The Queen; Presley v DPP (SA)
The High Court has allowed three appeals against a decision of the South Australian Supreme Court on the extended joint criminal enterprise doctrine of complicity, in the context of a murder conviction. Miller and two others were convicted of murder through extended joint criminal enterprise for their involvement in a confrontation in which a fourth man, Betts, stabbed and killed one of the victims. The SASC rejected Miller’s arguments that the verdict was unsafe because the trial judge had erred in misdirecting the jury by leaving open extended joint criminal enterprise in relation Continue reading
News: High Court rejects challenge to Australia’s common law of complicity
Today, a 6-1 majority of the High Court upheld a 6-1 majority decision of the same court a decade ago to not revisit a unanimous decision of the same court 21 years ago, whose effect is eloquently described in Gageler J’s judgment as follows:
Three men set out to rob a bank. They adopt a simple plan. One of them, the driver, is to wait in the car. The other two are to enter the bank. One is to wave a gun. The other is to put the money in a bag. The two who enter the bank encounter a security guard. The gunman shoots him and he dies. Who of the three is liable for murder? The traditional answer of the common law is that the criminal liability of each depends on the intention of each. The gunman is liable for murder if he shot the security guard intending to cause death or grievous harm…. But what if shooting to kill or cause grievous harm was never part of the plan? The gunman went too far. The gun was not meant to be loaded. The gun was meant only to frighten…. The common law has of late given a different answer. The bagman and driver need not have intended that the gunman would shoot to kill or cause grievous harm as a possible means of carrying out the plan to rob the bank. It is enough for them to be liable for murder that they foresaw the possibility that the gunman would take it upon himself to shoot to kill or cause grievous harm and that they participated in the plan to rob the bank with that foresight.
Whereas the Privy Council and the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom ruled that the ‘common law of late’ was a ‘wrong turn’, the High Court today disagreed. Continue reading