Notes
- S v Mvelase 2004 (2) SACR 531 (W)
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In S v Mvelase (2004), Mvelase was charged with three counts of rape, committed against the same complainant, and was convicted and referred to a High Court for sentencing.
Before the Court confirmed the conviction and proceeded to sentencing of the accused, it was contended on his behalf that the proceedings in the court a quo had not been in accordance with justice, because the magistrate made no further enquiries when the accused's legal representative had closed his case without him testifying, although it had been indicated to the complainant that he would testify.
The court noted that “it would be a sad day indeed” if a presiding officer were to be required to assume the incompetence of legal representatives and was thus required to treat the accused as if he were unrepresented.
The court held that a judicial officer should be entitled to assume that a legal representative had informed the accused fully of her or his rights and that the decision not to testify was that of the accused himself.
The mere fact that in cross-examining witnesses the legal representative may have alluded to what the accused would testify did not lead, where the accused then failed to testify, to the inevitable inference that the defense case had been closed against the accused's wishes or that she or he did not know of her or his rights to testify.
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The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution sets forth rights related to criminal prosecutions. It was ratified in 1791 as part of the United States Bill of Rights. The Supreme Court has applied most of the protections of this amendment to the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The right to silence is a legal principle which guarantees any individual the right to refuse to answer questions from law enforcement officers or court officials. It is a legal right recognized, explicitly or by convention, in many of the world's legal systems.
The presumption of innocence is a legal principle that every person accused of any crime is considered innocent until proven guilty. Under the presumption of innocence, the legal burden of proof is thus on the prosecution, which must present compelling evidence to the trier of fact. If the prosecution does not prove the charges true, then the person is acquitted of the charges. The prosecution must in most cases prove that the accused is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. If reasonable doubt remains, the accused must be acquitted. The opposite system is a presumption of guilt.
The Hudood Ordinances are laws in Pakistan that were enacted in 1979 as part of then military ruler Zia-ul-Haq's "Islamisation" process. It replaced parts of the British-era Pakistan Penal Code, adding new criminal offences of adultery and fornication, and new punishments of whipping, amputation, and stoning to death. After much controversy and criticism parts of the law were extensively revised in 2006 by the Women's Protection Bill.
In the Pitcairn sexual assault trial of 2004 seven men living on Pitcairn Island faced 55 charges relating to sexual offences against children and young people. The accused represented a third of the island's male population and included Steve Christian, the mayor. On 24 October, all but one of the defendants were found guilty on at least some of the charges. Another six men living abroad, including Shawn Christian, who later served as mayor of Pitcairn, were tried on 41 charges in a separate trial in Auckland, New Zealand, in 2005.
Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004), is a United States Supreme Court decision that reformulated the standard for determining when the admission of hearsay statements in criminal cases is permitted under the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment. The Court held that prior testimonial statements of witnesses who have since become unavailable may not be admitted without cross-examination.
Alexey Vladimirovich Pichugin is a former manager in the security department at the Russian oil company Yukos. In 2003, Russian President Vladimir Putin initiated a campaign to expropriate Yukos and to harass and punish its executives. During testimony before an international tribunal in a case challenging Russia's campaign against Yukos, in which the tribunal found the company indeed had been unlawfully expropriated, a former advisor to President Putin testified that the campaign included formation in February 2003 of “a special unit [that] was set up to fabricate evidence” and to “launch the Government attack [against Yukos] under the guise of ‘legitimate’ court proceedings". Pichugin faced multiple trials, which have been determined by the European Court of Human Rights to have been unfair and in violation of his human rights. His case has been described as a politically motivated attempt to obtain false evidence against Yukos executives Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Leonid Nevzlin and Pichugin is said to be “the longest-serving political prisoner in Russia".
Jean Kambanda is a Rwandan former politician who served as the Prime Minister of Rwanda in the caretaker government from the start of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. He is the only head of government to plead guilty to genocide, in the first group of such convictions since the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide came into effect in 1951.
R v Cuerrier was a 1998 decision by the Supreme Court of Canada, which ruled that knowingly exposing a sexual partner to HIV constitutes a prosecutable crime under Canadian law.
Peter Hugh McGregor Ellis was a New Zealand child care worker who was convicted of child sexual abuse. He was at the centre of one of the country's most enduring judicial controversies, after being found guilty in June 1993 in the High Court of New Zealand on 16 counts of sexual offences involving children in his care at the Christchurch Civic Creche and sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment. He maintained his innocence until his death 26 years later and was supported by many New Zealanders in his attempts to overturn his convictions. Concerns about the reliability of the convictions centred on lurid stories told by many of the children and the interview techniques used to obtain their testimony.
A rape shield law is a law that limits the ability to introduce evidence or cross-examine rape complainants about their past sexual behaviour. The term also refers to a law that prohibits the publication of the identity of an alleged rape victim.
Somchai Neelapaijit, a Thai Muslim lawyer and human rights activist who "disappeared" on 12 March 2004 during Thaksin Shinawatra's regime. On that date, Somchai was last seen in Ramkhamhaeng where eyewitnesses saw four men dragging him from his car. He has not been seen since.
Marsy's Law, the California Victims' Bill of Rights Act of 2008, enacted by voters as Proposition 9 through the initiative process in the November 2008 general election, is a controversial amendment to the state's constitution and certain penal code sections. The act protects and expands the legal rights of victims of crime to include 17 rights in the judicial process, including the right to legal standing, protection from the defendant, notification of all court proceedings, and restitution, as well as granting parole boards far greater powers to deny inmates parole. Critics allege that the law unconstitutionally restricts defendant's rights, by allowing prosecutors to withhold exculpatory evidence under certain circumstances, and harms victims by restricting their rights to discovery, depositions, and interviews. Passage of this law in California has led to the passage of similar laws in Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Ohio and Wisconsin, and efforts to pass similar laws in Hawaii, Iowa, Montana, Idaho, South Dakota, and Pennsylvania. In November 2017, Marsy's Law was found to be unconstitutional and void in its entirety by the Supreme Court of Montana for violating that state's procedure for amending the Montana Constitution.
Following the common law system introduced into Hong Kong when it became a Crown colony, Hong Kong's criminal procedural law and the underlying principles are very similar to the one in the UK. Like other common law jurisdictions, Hong Kong follows the principle of presumption of innocence. This principle penetrates the whole system of Hong Kong's criminal procedure and criminal law. Viscount Sankey once described this principle as a 'golden thread'. Therefore, knowing this principle is vital for understanding the criminal procedures practised in Hong Kong.
Berghuis v. Thompkins, 560 U.S. 370 (2010), is a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court in which the Court considered the position of a suspect who understands their right to remain silent under Miranda v. Arizona and is aware that they have the right to remain silent, but does not explicitly invoke or waive the right.
R v Evans and McDonald was the prosecution of two footballers, Ched Evans and Clayton McDonald, who were accused of the rape of a woman. On 20 April 2012, Evans was convicted and sentenced to five years imprisonment. McDonald was acquitted. Several people were later fined after naming the woman on Twitter and other social media websites.
Criminal procedure in South Africa refers to the adjudication process of that country's criminal law. It forms part of procedural or adjectival law, and describes the means by which its substantive counterpart, South African criminal law, is applied. It has its basis mainly in English law.
S v Masiya is an important case in South African criminal law, decided by the Constitutional Court.
In Hlantlalala & Others v Dyanti NO & Another 1999 (2) SACR 541 (SCA); [1999] 4 All SA 472 (SCA) an important case in South African criminal procedure, the accused were a group of women from a rural area involved in a dispute regarding entitlement to use a piece of land. The women went on to the land and harvested mielies. The complainant charged them with theft.
M v R or M v The Queen is an Australian legal case decided in the High Court. It is an important authority in the field of criminal law, for the circumstances in which it is permissible for a jury's guilty verdict to be overturned by a judge. The case involved an appeal against criminal conviction by a father, against allegations of sexual assault and rape by his daughter. His appeal was allowed by majority.