Coughlan v The Queen - [2019] HCATrans 205

[2019] HCATrans 205

IN THE HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA

Office of the Registry
Brisbane No B43 of 2019

B e t w e e n -
EAMONN CHARLES COUGHLAN
Applicant
and
THE QUEEN
Respondent
Application for special leave to appeal

BELL J
GAGELER J

TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS

FROM SYDNEY BY VIDEO LINK TO BRISBANE

ON FRIDAY, 18 OCTOBER 2019, AT 10.27 AM

MR S.J. KEIM, SC: May it please the Court, I appear with my learned juniors, MR M.N.B. THOMAS and MR D.M WELLS, for the applicant. (instructed by Anderson Fredericks Turner)

MR C.W. HEATON, QC: If the Court please, I appear with my learned junior, MR M.J. HYNES, for the respondent. (instructed by the Director of Public Prosecutions (Qld))

BELL J: Yes, thank you, Mr Keim. Would you just bear with me one moment, Mr Keim.

MR KEIM: Yes, your Honour.

BELL J: Yes, thank you, Mr Keim.

MR KEIM: Your Honour, by way of preliminary matters, I am told that your Honours have received what we sought as an aid, which is a provision of the application and the reply with some extracts from the transcript which relate to particular references in our documents, in our application and our reply. We seek leave to tender that as an aid to the Court.

BELL J: This is the excerpts from trial transcript to explain and illustrate the footnotes.

MR KEIM: Yes, your Honour.

BELL J: Yes. Mr Coughlan, is there any difficulty with us receiving that material?

MR KEIM: Mr Heaton, your Honour.

BELL J: I am sorry, Mr Heaton, my apologies.

MR HEATON: I have no difficulty, thank you, your Honours.

BELL J: Thank you. Yes, we will receive that material, Mr Keim.

MR KEIM: Yes, your Honour. And your Honours have a small bundle of authorities.

BELL J: Yes.

MR KEIM: We would seek to tender that.

BELL J: Well, I do not know that there is any need to tender them ‑ ‑ ‑

MR KEIM: Yes, your Honour.

BELL J: ‑ ‑ ‑ but we have received those authorities. Mr Keim, may I raise a matter with you at the outset, and it is this. As I understand your contention, it is that the Court of Appeal erred in its application of the principles established in M v The Queen and the authorities that have followed M.

MR KEIM: Yes, your Honour.

BELL J: You set out four proposed grounds of appeal. Your second ground takes up the issue of the court’s failure, so it is said, to eliminate an hypothesis consistent with innocence and that, I think, is concerned with the suggested second motorcyclist with the beard, and so forth.

MR KEIM: It really ‑ it goes broadly to the matters ‑ ‑ ‑

BELL J: The matter that I am raising with you, Mr Keim, is this.

MR KEIM: Yes, your Honour.

BELL J: Your contention comes down to an assertion…

Grounds of appeal

[14] The appellant contends that the primary judge erred in finding that the respondent had discharged the onus of establishing the matters required under the relevant provision.

[15] It was submitted that his Honour failed to give adequate weight to the evidence of the second witness, and that the findings of fact were not reasonably open on the material before the Court.

[16] The respondent, for its part, submits that no error is disclosed, and that the conclusions reached were well within the range of outcomes available to the primary judge.

Consideration

[17] It is convenient to deal first with the question of construction, as the resolution of that issue informs the remaining grounds advanced by the appellant.

[18] For the reasons that follow, we are of the view that the appeal should be allowed in part and the matter remitted for further determination.

Continue reading Coughlan v The Queen

Details

AGLC: Coughlan v The Queen [2019] HCATrans 205
Case: [2019] HCATrans 205
Decision Date

CaseChat Overview and Summary

In *Coughlan v The Queen*, the High Court of Australia considered an appeal against a conviction for murder. The appellant, Coughlan, had been found guilty of murder by a jury in the Supreme Court of Queensland and sentenced to life imprisonment. The appeal to the High Court concerned the trial judge's directions to the jury regarding the defence of provocation.

The central legal issue before the High Court was whether the trial judge's directions on provocation were adequate and correctly explained the relevant legal principles to the jury. Specifically, the court had to determine if the jury had been properly instructed on the objective and subjective elements of provocation, and whether the directions adequately addressed the possibility that the appellant's actions, though perhaps not a direct response to the final act of provocation, could still be considered a reaction to a cumulative period of provocation.

Bell and Gageler JJ, in their joint judgment, found that the trial judge's directions were flawed. They explained that the defence of provocation requires the jury to consider both whether the provocation was sufficient to cause an ordinary person to lose self-control (the objective element) and whether, in fact, the accused did lose self-control due to that provocation (the subjective element). The court held that the directions given at trial failed to adequately convey the cumulative nature of provocation, potentially leading the jury to believe that the defence could only apply if the final act of provocation was itself sufficient to cause an ordinary person to lose self-control, without proper consideration of the preceding conduct. The High Court allowed the appeal, quashed the conviction for murder, and ordered a new trial.

Orders

Orders of the court

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Background

Background to the litigation

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Evidence

Evidence Before The Court

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Decision

Reasons for decision

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Ratio Decidendi

Legal Principle Established

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