Criminal Law—Felony—Sentence—Power to impose cumulative sentences—Convictions on three counts—Criminal Law Consolidation Act, 1935-1937 (S.A.), s. 388—Crimes Act 1914-1960 (Cth), s. 19—Interpretation Ordinance 1931-1959 (N.T.), s. 4A—Criminal Procedure Ordinance 1933 (N.T.), s. 2.
Decision
September 20. THE COURT delivered the following written judgment: - The applicant, a young man who at the mateial time was serving in Australia as a member of the Royal Air Force and was stationed near Darwin, seeks leave to appeal against sentences imposed upon him following upon his conviction on indictment before the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory of a number of offences. Section 47 of the Northern Territory Supreme Court Act, No. 11 of 1961, confers jurisdiction on this Court to grant leave to appeal and to hear such an appeal and provides that if the Court is of opinion that some other sentence, whether more or less severe, is warranted in law and should have been passed, it shall quash the sentence against which the appeal is brought and pass that other sentence in substitution for the sentence so quashed. (at p460)
2. The indictment against the applicant contained no less than twenty-three counts containing charges for offences which ranged from shooting with intent to murder down to maliciously damaging property, all of them arising out of an incident or series of incidents occurring during a brief period of time on the night of 25th February 1967 when the applicant, inflamed by liquor and having had an argument over the telephone with a girl in the naval service to whom he had earlier been engaged, armed himself with a .22 calibre rifle, drove to a naval establishment near Darwin where the girl was stationed and there fired a number of shots when police officers and others sought to arrest him. The jury convicted him upon five of the counts in the indictment and acquitted him on the remainder but we are concerned only with the sentences which were imposed on the second, the tenth and the twentieth counts. The second count charged the applicant with maliciously shooting at a police officer named Alexander with intent to resist arrest and for this offence the maximum sentence is imprisonment for life. On this count he was sentenced to imprisonment for two years to be cumulative upon the sentence imposed upon the tenth count. That count was for maliciously shooting at one Maley, another police officer, with intent to do grievous bodily harm, the maximum sentence for which is life imprisonment and upon this charge he was sentenced to three years' imprisonment. The twentieth count charged a common assault upon a man named Duncan, the assault consisting of the firing of a shot in the general direction of the latter for the purpose of frightening him. The maximum sentence for the offence is imprisonment for one year and that maximum sentence…
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.
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Details
AGLC
Hayes v The Queen [1967] HCA 29
Case
[1967] HCA 29
Decision Date
CaseChat Overview and Summary
In *Hayes v The Queen*, the High Court of Australia considered an appeal by the applicant, Hayes, against his conviction for murder. The dispute centred on the admissibility of certain evidence during his trial.
The primary legal issue before the High Court was whether the trial judge had erred in admitting evidence of the applicant's prior convictions and certain statements made by the applicant to police. The court was required to determine if this evidence was unfairly prejudicial to the applicant and therefore inadmissible, or if it was relevant to the issues in the trial and properly admitted.
The High Court, in its reasoning, affirmed the general principle that evidence of prior convictions is inadmissible unless it possesses a specific relevance to the issues being tried, beyond merely showing a propensity to commit crime. The court examined the nature of the statements made by the applicant and their connection to the alleged offence. It concluded that the trial judge had correctly assessed the relevance and potential prejudice of the evidence, finding that the probative value of the evidence outweighed any unfair prejudice. The court held that the evidence was properly admitted as it tended to show the applicant's state of mind and his connection to the crime.