Notes
- S v Mvelase 2004 (2) SACR 531 (W)
 | This article relating to case law in South Africa is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
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.
| | This article relating to case law in South Africa is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
In United States law, an Alford plea, also called a Kennedy plea in West Virginia, an Alford guilty plea, and the Alford doctrine, is a guilty plea in criminal court, whereby a defendant in a criminal case does not admit to the criminal act and asserts innocence, but accepts imposition of a sentence. This plea is allowed even if the evidence to be presented by the prosecution would be likely to persuade a judge or jury to find the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. This can be caused by circumstantial evidence and testimony favoring the prosecution, and difficulty finding evidence and witnesses that would aid the defense.
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 all but one of this amendment's protections 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 Scottsboro Boys were nine African American male teenagers accused of raping two white women in 1931. The landmark set of legal cases from this incident dealt with racism and the right to a fair trial. The cases included a lynch mob before the suspects had been indicted, all-white juries, rushed trials, and disruptive mobs. It is commonly cited as an example of a legal injustice in the United States legal system.
The Hudud Ordinances are laws in Pakistan enacted in 1979 as part of the Islamization of Pakistan by Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, the sixth president of Pakistan. 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.
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.
The criminal law of Canada is under the exclusive legislative jurisdiction of the Parliament of Canada. The power to enact criminal law is derived from section 91(27) of the Constitution Act, 1867. Most criminal laws have been codified in the Criminal Code, as well as the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, Youth Criminal Justice Act and several other peripheral statutes.
A rape shield law is a law that limits the ability to introduce evidence about the past sexual activity of a complainant in a sexual assault trial, or that limits cross-examination of complainants about their past sexual behaviour in sexual assault cases. The term also refers to a law that prohibits the publication of the identity of a complainant in a sexual assault case.
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 an 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 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. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court reached the same conclusion as Montana under its own state constitution in 2021.
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 Supreme Court of the United States 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.
South African criminal law is the body of national law relating to crime in South Africa. In the definition of Van der Walt et al., a crime is "conduct which common or statute law prohibits and expressly or impliedly subjects to punishment remissible by the state alone and which the offender cannot avoid by his own act once he has been convicted." Crime involves the infliction of harm against society. The function or object of criminal law is to provide a social mechanism with which to coerce members of society to abstain from conduct that is harmful to the interests of society.
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.
The South African law of evidence forms part of the adjectival or procedural law of that country. It is based on English common 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.
Antony "Tony" Shaw is a barrister of the High Court of New Zealand, and a former lecturer of law at Victoria University. He holds an LLB & BA from Auckland University; his practice covers civil and criminal matters. He is regarded as an expert on Human Rights Law. Shaw has appeared widely in the District and High Courts of New Zealand including successful appeals to the Court of Appeal, Privy Council and the New Zealand Supreme Court. Shaw has also appeared in the Employment Court of New Zealand and regularly appears before the New Zealand Parole Board.
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.
Kimmelman v. Morrison, 477 U.S. 365 (1986), was a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that clarified the relationship of the right to effective assistance of counsel under the Sixth Amendment to other constitutional rights in criminal procedure. In this case, evidence against the defendant was probably seized illegally, violating the Fourth Amendment, but he lost the chance to argue that point due to his lawyer's ineffectiveness. The prosecution argued that the defendant's attempt to make a Sixth Amendment argument via a habeas corpus petition was really a way to sneak his Fourth Amendment argument in through the back door. The Court unanimously disagreed, and held that the Fourth Amendment issue and the Sixth Amendment issue represented different constitutional values, and had different requirements for prevailing in court, and therefore were to be treated separately by rules of procedure. Therefore, the habeas corpus petition could go forward. In its opinion, the Court also gave guidance on how to apply its decisions in Stone v. Powell and Strickland v. Washington.