Hartigan v The Queen

Hartigan v The Queen concerned an appeal to the High Court of Australia following a conviction for murder. The appellant, Hartigan, 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 challenged the validity of that conviction.

The central legal issue before the High Court was whether the trial judge had erred in law by failing to direct the jury adequately on the defence of provocation. Specifically, the court had to consider whether the evidence presented at trial was capable of supporting a finding that the appellant had acted under provocation, and if so, whether the jury had been properly instructed on the elements of this defence, including the requirement that the provocation must be such as to make an ordinary person lose self-control.

McHugh and Callinan JJ, in their joint judgment, found that there was sufficient evidence before the jury to raise the issue of provocation. They held that the trial judge's summing up had been inadequate because it did not sufficiently explain to the jury the objective test for provocation, namely, whether an ordinary person might have lost self-control in the circumstances. The judges emphasised that the jury must be instructed that the provocation must be of a kind that could cause an ordinary person to act as the accused did, not merely that the accused himself lost self-control.

The High Court allowed the appeal, quashed the conviction for murder, and ordered a new trial.