Milat v Att-Gen for NSW

The applicants, Ivan Milat and his mother, Mrs. K. Milat, sought to restrain the Attorney-General for New South Wales from prosecuting Ivan Milat for murder. The applicants contended that the Attorney-General should be restrained from prosecuting Mr. Milat on the grounds that the prosecution was an abuse of process and that the Attorney-General had acted improperly in commencing the prosecution. The matter came before the High Court of Australia.

The High Court was required to determine whether the Attorney-General for New South Wales could be restrained from prosecuting Ivan Milat for murder. Specifically, the court considered whether the circumstances of the case constituted an abuse of process such that the Attorney-General's discretion to prosecute should be interfered with by the court, and whether the Attorney-General had acted improperly in exercising that discretion.

The court held that the Attorney-General's discretion to prosecute is a broad one and should not be interfered with by the courts unless there are exceptional circumstances demonstrating an abuse of process. The court found that the applicants had not established that the prosecution was an abuse of process or that the Attorney-General had acted improperly. The court reasoned that the power to prosecute is vested in the Attorney-General and that judicial intervention would undermine the executive function of the Attorney-General. The court emphasised that the appropriate forum for determining guilt or innocence is the criminal trial itself, not a civil proceeding seeking to restrain prosecution.

The applications were dismissed.