Category: Criminal Law

By Zeb Holmes and Ugur Nedim Gordon Wood has failed in his bid to sue for malicious prosecution after he was acquitted of murdering his girlfriend Caroline Byrne. A prosecution without merit Mr Wood was found guilty in 2008 of throwing Ms Byrne off a cliff at The Gap in Sydney on 7 June 1995, ...

The NSW state government commissioned a review of the laws relating to consent in sexual assault cases in May 2018, following the acquittal of a man accused of sexually assaulting an 18-year old woman in an alleyway behind his father’s Kings Cross nightclub in 2013. The proposal has been met with opposition by the President ...

By Sonia Hickey and Ugur Nedim A Sydney man who pleaded guilty to manufacturing replica guns with a 3D printer is facing a lengthy prison sentence. Mr Sicen Sun was arrested last year after advertising one of his replica firearms on a Facebook community ‘Buy, Swap and Sell group’ for ‘$1 million – negotiable’. He ...

As reported in our recent blogs about ‘conditional release orders’ and broadened ‘intensive correction orders’, the NSW Parliament assented to the Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Amendment (Sentencing Options) Act 2017 (the Act) on 24 October 2017, which amends the Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act 1999 (the Sentencing Act) as it relates to the penalty options available to magistrates and ...

Aboriginal Justice campaigner Keenan Mundine recently addressed the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva. He called on the leading human rights body to demand that the Turnbull government raises the age of criminal responsibility in this country. Currently, Australian authorities are detaining children as young as 10 in youth justice facilities. The practice of ...

By Zeb Holmes and Ugur Nedim Donald Trump has insisted throughout his presidency that there was “no collusion” between his election campaign and the Russian government. Just hours before his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was set to go on trial for tax and bank fraud charges, Mr Trump and his lawyers changed their tune. ...

On 19 July, the Knesset – the Israeli parliament – passed the Nation-State Law, which officially relegates Palestinians in Israel to the rank of second-class citizens. This has effectively enshrined Israel’s decades-old system of apartheid in the nation’s Basic Laws: its de facto constitution. The legislation stipulates that only Jewish people have the right to self-determination ...

By Sonia Hickey and Ugur Nedim Many believe the culture of misconduct in the Queensland Police Force (QPS) is worse than ever before, even poorer than prior to the state’s 1987 Fitzgerald Inquiry into police corruption. Despite recommendations for better accountability mechanisms, police in Queensland – and indeed across Australia – have largely been left ...

The Turnbull government oversaw the 2015 implementation of a system that allows 21 government agencies warrantless access to all citizens’ metadata, while last year, it announced a national facial recognition system that will allow all citizens’ ID photos to be matched with CCTV footage images. The government is currently in the process of rolling out a national ...

By Sonia Hickey and Ugur Nedim Concerns have re-emerged about Queensland police officers escaping discipline despite illegally accessing the personal information of individuals on a restricted police database. Information released under the state’s right to information laws reveals that of 59 officers investigated internally after illegally accessing the Queensland Police Records and Information Management Exchange ...