Petty v The Queen; Maiden v The Queen

The applicants, Leslie Davidson Petty and Stephen Arthur Leslie Maiden, sought special leave to appeal to the High Court of Australia. The proceedings concerned appeals against decisions of the Court of Criminal Appeal. The central issue revolved around the admissibility of evidence and the subsequent directions given by the trial judge.

The legal issues before the High Court included whether the re-examination of a witness, Crawley, was permissible and whether the directions given by the trial judge in respect of that re-examination were correct. Specifically, the applicants argued that the directions, while acknowledged by the Court of Criminal Appeal to have gone too far and amounted to impermissible comment on the failure to raise a matter earlier, were fundamentally flawed.

The applicants' primary submission was that the re-examination should not have been permitted at all, and that the trial judge's directions were wholly erroneous. They contended that even if the Court of Criminal Appeal's view on the admissibility of the re-examination was accepted, the error identified was so fundamental to the issues in the case that the proviso (which allows an appeal to be dismissed if the error did not lead to a miscarriage of justice) ought not to have been applied. This argument was advanced with even greater force if their primary submission regarding the impermissibility of the re-examination was accepted.