Justin Sibley crime lawyer recently reviewed a case of home invasion, assault and theft in company at Cleveland. The circumstances were not unfamiliar. A defendant who had been tricked into being a part of something that he ordinarily would not have, and aggressive actions on the part of the others that he didn’t anticipate. Worse [...]
When the Australian Federal Police and Queensland Police Service liaise with Border Force on a drug trafficking or importation offence in Brisbane, highly effective surveillance and interception capabilities are deployed. Border force take advantage of a lack of understanding of legislation controlling the arrivals lounge, to intimidate inbound passengers into believing they don’t have any [...]
As a criminal defence lawyer it is essential that we maintain justice at the Magistrates Courts level when it comes to traffic offences and the resultant infringements. Recently a hearing conducted in the Richlands Magistrates Court indicated the danger of human error in the operation of LIDAR devices. These devices are inherently reliable when properly [...]
In May 2014 the Abbott government announced, with typical bombast, the arrival of a new super-agency into an already cluttered law enforcement environment. Backed by fresh legislation and armed troops fitted out in coal-black uniforms, the Australian Border Force (ABF) was to epitomise an increasingly belligerent approach to policing a frontier that the then-Immigration Minister [...]
Over the last 15 years or more, I have observed Australian immigration policy bring Australia into disrepute internationally, and help to fuel an ever growing problem of hatred towards the West and Australia in particular in the Middle East. Recently I worked on a case to free a young Middle Eastern student accused of offences in [...]
Following on from our observations of the recent events in Paris and Jakarta, we were pleased to deliver a training session to a range of Country Risk Managers on ASMTFA at the Strategic Risk Forum in Singapore on behalf of NYA International at the request of AIG. The session was well received and covered issues of [...]
Today we argued that s 90B of the Traffic Operations (Road Use Management) Act (TORUM) 1995 (Qld) does not mandate that two separate drink driving offences committed within a short period of each other must lead to cumulative disqualifications. Magistrate Carmody agreed and concluded that the sentencing function of the Magistrate is discretionary, and therefore [...]
The release on bail of the 60 Minutes crew, and the mother of the attempted victims of an abduction in Lebanon, may be kicking the can down the road in terms of impact. We would expect that the Lebanese judicial system will want these individuals to return to face Court, in the quite likely event [...]
The arrest of Sally Faulkner, the 60 Minutes crew led by Tara Brown and the representatives of a child recovery company in Lebanon demonstrate the need for careful consideration and expert knowledge prior to making decisions about the operation of laws in a foreign jurisdiction. One can only be knowledgeable about so many locations, and [...]
The very sad events in Brussels, like in Paris and elsewhere, has resulted in the inevitable media driven search to determine whether something was missed by law enforcement or intelligence agencies that could have prevented the attack. As other commentators are now beginning to concede, these sorts of attacks are very difficult to thwart. Terrorism [...]
