NSW Considers Medical Cannabis Driving Defence: Interview With Former Magistrate David Heilpern
The Turnbull government legalised medicinal cannabis use in 2016, along with the lawful cultivation, manufacture and distribution of it. But, six years on, and drivers who use the medicine continue to be penalised for having traces of it in their...
Calls for Police Guns Out of First Nations Communities and an End to the Intervention
Karrinjarla Muwajarri-Ceasefire protesters gathered out front of Sydney Town Hall on 18 June, as part of a National Day of Action calling for guns out of remote First Nations communities and an end to the imposed settler colonial police state...
Children Vandalise Detention Centre After Being Subjected to ‘Cruel and Degrading’ Treatment
Australia’s harsh youth detention regime is in the spotlight once again this week, after reports that mistreated children in Banksia Hill juvenile detention centre in Perth damaged around 100 of the 250 cells in the facility. The conduct follows a...
Albanese Must Step Up and Fight for Assange, as UK Greenlights Extradition
UK home secretary Priti Patel has done what those who were aware of her political leanings expected. Last Friday she greenlighted the extradition of Julian Assange, so that the White House can continue its assault on the Australian journalist, who...
The Law, Defences and Penalties for Kidnapping in New South Wales
Two teenagers who lured a Canberra-based businessman via the dating app Grindr to bushland on the New South Wales South Coast have been found not guilty of his murder. Peter Keely’s body was found gagged, bound and battered in bushland...
NSW Police Accused of Covering Up Killing of Mentally Ill Man
In 2019, 40-year old Todd McKenzie was fatally shot by police while he was having a psychotic episode. He was alone and armed with a knife when officers forced their way into his home in Taree on the New South...
Sydney Criminal Lawyers® Weekly Rundown – Articles from 13 to 19 June 2022
In case you’ve missed any of them, here’s a rundown of the past week’s articles: What are the Defences to Defamation in New South Wales? The recently-introduced defence of ‘public interest’ provides some protection to those who criticise politicians and...
NT Government Continues Youth Detention Torture Regime at Don Dale
Six years after Four Corners exposed the atrocities being perpetrated upon children at Darwin’s Don Dale Youth Detention Centre - and the subsequent push for reforms in its wake - the Northern Territory government has successfully re-established the institutional torture...
Drug Law Reformists Call on Albanese to Legalise Recreational Cannabis
The 2022 federal election was significant not only in the turning away from the major parties, the rise of the teal independents via the dethroning of prominent Liberal MPs, and the Greens securing balance of power in the Senate, but...
The Defence of Lawful Correction of a Minor
A 46-year old unemployed single mother has been sentenced to nine months’ probation after pleading guilty to assaulting her 10-year old son with a wooden spoon. The court heard that the woman smacked her autistic son, who suffers from ADHD,...
