Williams v The Queen - [1998] HCATrans 118

IN THE HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA

Office of the Registry
Brisbane No B39 of 1997

B e t w e e n -
VICTOR ALLEN WILLIAMS
Applicant
and
THE QUEEN

Respondent

Application for special leave to appeal

McHUGH J
KIRBY J
CALLINAN J

TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS

AT BRISBANE ON FRIDAY, 17 APRIL 1998, AT 11.49 AM

MR A.J. RAFTER: May it please the Court, I appear for the applicant. (instructed by Legal Aid Office (Queensland))

MR R.G. MARTIN: May it please your Honours, I appear with my friend, MR T.A FULLER for the respondent. (instructed by the Director of Prosecutions (Queensland))

McHUGH J: Yes, Mr Rafter.

MR RAFTER: Your Honours, judgment was given in this matter by the Court of Appeal on 13 December 1995 and the application for special leave was made on 12 August 1997, so it was out of time by quite some margin.

McHUGH J: Twenty months.

MR RAFTER: Yes. It is therefore necessary to seek an order under Order 69A rule 3.

KIRBY J: It is suggested that for four months of the 20 months you had chosen not to proceed.

MR RAFTER: Yes, that is correct. The circumstances explaining the delay are contained in an affidavit of Timothy Forbes Harland, which is at page 49 and following in the application book. A summary of the contents of the affidavit is there was delay by counsel then representing the applicant, initially, the applicant having very quickly, after the judgment went against him in the Court of Appeal, deciding to apply for legal aid for the purpose of an application for special leave. Thereafter, there was delay by counsel then briefed.

McHUGH J: I think you might go to the issues.

MR RAFTER: The applicant had been convicted of murder of his wife, by strangulation. The offence was alleged to have occurred on 1 June 1994. The defence conducted at the trial was diminished responsibility. There were three psychiatrists who gave evidence. One testified that he had no defence. That was Dr Reddan. Two psychiatrists gave him a defence of diminished responsibility. That was Dr Edwards and Dr Mulholland. The elements of the defence, as explained by the learned trial judge to the jury, appear at pages 7 to 9 of the application book.

Then, his Honour commences to summarise the evidence of each of the three psychiatrists. Dr Reddan’s evidence is dealt with at pages 10 to 12 of the application book. Dr Edwards at pages 12 to 15, and I do not need to take the Court to those, except to say that Dr Edwards supported the proposition that the applicant’s capacity to control his actions and his capacity to know that he ought not do the act was substantially impaired, thereby giving him a 304A defence of diminished responsibility. Dr Mulholland’s evidence is dealt with in the summing up at application book pages 15 to 16 and the impugned direction is at page 15, commencing at…

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.

Continue reading Williams v The Queen

Details

AGLC: Williams v The Queen [1998] HCATrans 118
Case: [1998] HCATrans 118
Decision Date

CaseChat Overview and Summary

The High Court of Australia considered the appeal of Williams against the conviction for murder. The appellant, Williams, had been found guilty of murder by a jury in the Supreme Court of Queensland and subsequently appealed to the Court of Appeal of Queensland, which dismissed his appeal. Williams then sought and was granted special leave to appeal to the High Court.

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 determine if 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.

The High Court, in a joint judgment, found that there was sufficient evidence of provocation to warrant a direction to the jury. Their Honours explained that the defence of provocation requires an objective element, namely that the provocation must be such as to cause an ordinary person to lose self-control, and a subjective element, namely that the particular accused did in fact lose self-control. The trial judge's summing up, by failing to adequately explain the objective element and its application to the facts, had created a real risk that the jury had not properly considered this crucial aspect of the defence.

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

Orders