Legal Notes

The accused was sentenced for committing offences quite distinct from those set out in the indictment. After the trial, in sentencing, at paragraphs 6 and 10 of the judgment, his Honour consistently replaced the term " substance " with " device ", asserting that the Crown alleged the dispatch of an " explosive device " when the Crown's charge against the accused did not allege this at all. During the trial, the Prosecutor slipped several times in describing the item not as a packet that “ exploded ”, but as a packet that “ was exploded ” - accidently making a truthful statement that identified how police fragment suspicious items. In his summing up of the Crown's case the Prosecutor made the same revealing and truthful statment, telling the jury: "What then is the evidence about the Canberra Mail Exchange? There are a number of pieces of evidence that I want you to consider and which I say to you will ...

The audio file available here is a deep dive exploring the transition of the legal proceedings from the evidentiary anomalies in a directions hearing discussed earlier into a significant miscarriage of justice during the ensuing trial and sentencing. It specifically examines the mid-trial redefinition of the charges, the retrospective application of the law, and how these judicial shifts effectively neutralized the defence's arguments. The narrative shifts from the evidentiary discrepancies of the initial May 1999 direction hearing to  fundamental failures of legal principles during the subsequent trial and sentencing. Your browser does not support the audio element. Several key developments underpinning this "miscarriage of justice": Mid-Trial Redefinition of the Offense: The court changed the legal interpretation of the offense during the trial. Specifically, while Dunstan was charged with posting an "exp...