On 20 February 2020, the historical drama, “The Professor and the Madman”, starring Hollywood heavyweights, Sean Penn and Mel Gibson, was rolled out to Australian cinemas. It is loosely based on the 1998 book ‘The Surgeon of Crowthorne’ written by Simon Winchester, which revolved around the life and work of Professor James Murray, who compiled [...]
Last week, a Queensland mother became the first person to be charged under the State’s new, expanded definition of murder laws, after allegedly leaving her two infant children to die in the blistering heat of her car, after falling asleep one Saturday afternoon. The penalty for murder is mandatory life imprisonment, which cannot be mitigated. Until [...]
School’s out! So hold onto your hats, folks, it's on again. As thousands of school-leavers descend upon Surfers Paradise for the annual ritual of revelry that has become known as Schoolies Week, thousands more parents hold their collective breath in dread and anticipation. The institutional shackles have been broken and cast aside, leaving only the unbridled [...]
About ten years before the birth of Christ the great Roman poet Publius Ovidius Naso, in his collection of epistolary poems known as The Heroides, coined the Latin phrase Exitus acta probat, which translates roughly to the often-quoted mantra ‘The end justifies the means’. It is a sentiment celebrated by the Italian Renaissance writer Niccolo [...]
In February 1692, in a secluded village in the isolated British American colony of Massachusetts, 9-year-old Betty Parris and her 11-year-old cousin Abigail Williams, began to behave very strangely indeed. It seems they had recently taken to screaming, ranting and raving, throwing objects hither and thither, making weird noises, and generally behaving in a way [...]
Last week, Australian man Jock Palfreeman was released from a Bulgarian prison after being incarcerated for 8 years and 11 months for the murder of a local law student in 2007. Palfreeman has consistently protested his innocence, his legal team unsuccessfully arguing at his trial that the fatal incident occurred after he ran to the [...]
Four men made headlines recently for chasing down a knife-wielding man in a crowded Sydney street and, armed only with milk crates and chairs, tackling him to the ground, disarming him and detaining him until police arrived. The male firefighters who leapt out of their firetruck in the busy traffic and joined the chase, wielding [...]
We've all heard the news of protesters demonstrating in the streets of Hong Kong, decrying the proposed amendments to that city's extradition laws with China. We've seen the television news footage of university students, right here in Australia, pushing and shoving each other over whether Hong Kong citizens should be tried in the Communist mainland. [...]
Once upon a time, if you did the crime you did the time. If not, you walked. Nowadays, it can be somewhat more complicated. The practice of criminal law in Australia is increasingly embracing the time-honoured US model of down-and-dirty, pragmatic plea-bargaining deals between prosecution and defence, aimed at achieving a compromise acceptable to both [...]
Robot judges in Estonia? American AI sentencing criminals to prison? Computers predicting crimes before they even happen? One may be forgiven for thinking such concepts come straight from a science fiction novel, or the rabid rantings of an online conspiracy theorist. The truth is they are all part of today’s reality. And it looks like [...]
