Higgins v The Queen

This matter came before the High Court of Australia on an application for special leave to appeal. The applicant, Higgins, sought to appeal a decision of the Victorian Court of Criminal Appeal. The respondent was The Queen. The core of the applicant's argument concerned the length of the trial and its potential impact on the fairness of the proceedings.

The legal issues before the High Court revolved around whether the extreme length of a criminal trial, in conjunction with alleged errors, could give rise to a miscarriage of justice. Specifically, the applicant contended that the longer a trial becomes, the less significant any individual error might appear, and that this proposition, if accepted, could undermine the principle that even a single error can vitiate a verdict. The applicant also sought to argue that the mere length of a trial, without more, should raise a presumption of irregularity or a potential miscarriage of justice.

The applicant's counsel argued that in trials of exceptional length, such as the present case and others cited, there should be a starting assumption that a miscarriage of justice may have occurred. They submitted that the approach of the court below appeared to suggest that the longer the trial, the less weight should be given to any particular error. The applicant's position was that in an ordinary trial, a single error would be sufficient to demonstrate a miscarriage, and that this standard should not be diminished simply because the trial was protracted. The court questioned how such an assumption or presumption could arise, and the applicant's counsel acknowledged that the court below had stated that nothing could be shown by an accused to demonstrate that a jury could not approach its task properly due to the trial's length, nor could anything be shown to the contrary. The applicant argued that the mere fact of reaching a verdict after a lengthy trial did not, of itself, prove the trial's regularity.