Posts By: Sydney Criminal Lawyers

Inmate Released on Appeal, After Trial Judge Misapplied Mental Illness Defence

Mental health defence

By Paul Gregoire and Ugur Nedim On 22 September 2017, Nick Masters veered onto the wrong side of Port Macquarie’s Hastings River Drive, and collided head on with a car being driven by a Mr Ashenden, who was killed, whilst his wife, Mrs Ashenden was seriously injured. NSW District Court Judge Mark Marien found Masters… Read more »

Probative Value is of Primary Importance When Determining Admissibility of Tendency Evidence

High Court of Australia

By Paul Gregoire and Ugur Nedim A five justice bench of the High Court of Australia determined on 19 October that a NSW Supreme Court trial that saw the jury find a Coffs Harbour man guilty of the murder of his two-and-a-half-year-old stepdaughter that heavily relied on tendency evidence was correct in doing so. The young girl… Read more »

The New Offence of Threatening a Criminal Defence Lawyer in New South Wales

Defence Lawyer

By Paul Gregoire and Ugur Nedim Times have certainly changed in the legal realm in terms of who needs protection from whom. Back in the early 1990s, laws were enacted to protect judges, prosecutors, witnesses and others involved in cases against those accused of committing crimes from threats and reprisals that would obviously be perpetrated… Read more »

Sentence Reduced as Judge Failed to Consider Impact of COVID in Prison

COVID in Prison

By Paul Gregoire and Ugur Nedim NSW police commenced an investigation in June 2017, which led to detectives identifying eight men involved in a drug manufacturing operation producing MDA (3, 4-methylenedioxyamphetamine), a substance usually sold as MDMA on the street but can differ in effect. The joint criminal enterprise involved three properties belonging to one of… Read more »

Judicial Independence is More Important Than Ever

Judicial Independence

By Paul Gregoire and Ugur Nedim “Most Australians assume that an Australian judge would not hesitate to find against the government or a government agency if the law requires that result,” said High Court Justice Jacqueline Gleeson, in a recent speech on judicial independence in liberal democracies. Appointed to the highest court in March last year, Gleeson,… Read more »

Google Not Liable for Providing a Link to a Defamatory Article, High Court Finds

Google

By Paul Gregoire and Ugur Nedim In a turnaround to the findings relating to other recent internet publication defamation suits, the majority of the High Court recently found that Google, as respondent, wasn’t the publisher of an article listed in its search engine’s results, but rather the tech giant merely facilitated access to it. Melbourne… Read more »