Tag: lawyers
  • Chris Nyst, Criminal Law

For The Record…

Last week the press had a field day taking pot-shots at Southport magistrate Bernadette Callaghan for ordering police to remove handcuffs from a defendant appearing in court. When the man subsequently made a run for it, according to newspaper reports police went into a spin, with one ‘police source’ accusing the magistrate of treating herself as being “above the law” because she refused to have the defendant manacled in her courtroom, and another high-ranking officer threatening to boycott the courts over the matter.
  • Chris Nyst, International, Opinion, Politics

The Hero Of Palmyra

The armed militants of Daesh, pillaging and plundering their way across the Middle East, proclaim themselves heroes of Islam. But heroes come in all shapes and sizes.
  • Chris Nyst, Criminal Law, International, Opinion

New Fix For Serial Junkies

If you're hooked, as I am, on the phenomenally popular podcast, Serial, crank up those earphones and get ready for a new round of infuriating twists and turns.
  • Chris Nyst, Criminal Law, International, Opinion

Would You Believe…

Criminal defence lawyers often deal with desperate people - desperate to clear their name, desperate to establish their innocence, sometimes just desperate to avoid their guilt. And desperate people take desperate measures.
  • Chris Nyst, Criminal Law, Dispute Resolution

Sweet Little Fish

Little fish are sweet. High profile defamation actions and messy murder trials may make for big headlines, but from a lawyer's point of view the smaller, seemingly less significant cases are just as challenging and (provided you finish first, and not just a commendable second) every bit as satisfying.
  • Chris Nyst, International, Politics

Taking On The State

Experienced lawyers will tell you, you can’t really call yourself a litigator until you’ve won the unwinnable case, and lost the un-loseable. I’ve had more than my share of hopeless cases, with varying results, but here’s one even I wouldn’t like to take on.
  • Chris Nyst, International, Opinion, Politics

From Little Things

Last week ‘New York’s Finest’ were reaching for their Smartphones, posting happy snaps of panhandlers begging on Broadway and vagrants urinating in the streets. What the…?!
  • Chris Nyst, Criminal Law, Opinion

CSI Washington DC

So you think that all CSI stuff is pretty impressive, huh? Think again. On February 24, 1981, a young woman was raped in her Washington DC home by an armed intruder. She saw the perpetrator only fleetingly as he climbed in through her window, before tying her up and blindfolding her, so she could give only limited details of his description. But five weeks later, when 18-year old African American man Kirk Odom was being questioned on an unrelated matter, a policeman thought he fitted the limited description. So police showed a photograph of Odom to the victim, who tentatively identified him as the culprit.
  • Chris Nyst, Hollywood, Litigation, Opinion, Politics

The Bloody Insult

Not everything's about money. One of my favourite Australian films of all time is Ken Hannan’s classic 1975 drama Sunday Too Far Away. It tells the tale of knock-about shearers working the sheds on an outback sheep station in 1955 Australia. Their tough existence is summed up in the title, paraphrasing what’s known as The Shearers Wife’s Lament – “Friday night too tired, Saturday night too drunk, Sunday too far away.” Jack Thompson plays Foley, a hard-drinking gun shearer who leads his workmates in a strike over their substandard working conditions. When their employer brings in non-union labour in a bid to break the strike, Foley and his mates dig in. It’s a great line, and a great way to end the film.
  • Chris Nyst, Human Rights, International, Opinion, Privacy

Carly Nyst Addresses UN Human Rights Council

On Friday last week my dear daughter Carly Nyst, a UK-based Australian lawyer who is currently the Legal Director of the human rights group Privacy International in London, addressed the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on the right to privacy in the digital age. As part of a panel which included Flavia Panasieri , the Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, and Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Catalino Botero Marino, Carly told the Commission that the right to privacy is a fundamental part of human dignity, which guarantees the protection of other human rights such as the freedom of expression, and should be jealously defended by the United Nations, particularly in the wake of WikiLeaks and the Edward Snowden Affair. The Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Ms Botero said the Commission recognised that systematic collection of data by governments directly affects the right to privacy and freedom of expression, and appropriate safeguards and controls must be elaborated to prevent those negative effects on human rights.
  • Chris Nyst, Opinion, Sport

Satts Tells It All In Glory

Yesterday I joined South Sydney faithful at the old Redfern Town Hall in Sydney for the launch of Glory, Glory, the autobiographical account of the life and times of South Sydney rugby league legend ‘Gentleman’ John Sattler. MC’ed by John’s premiership-winning son Scott, and introduced by life-long South Sydney tragic Ray Martin, the event was a raging success, not least because of the engaging reminiscences of the great man himself.
  • Chris Nyst, Opinion

Breaking The Cycle

Violence begets violence. We’ve all become accustomed to television images of US police responding to even the most apparently minor civil disturbance with guns drawn and pointed, barking orders at suspects and bystanders alike, taking no prisoners and no chances whatsoever, because somebody, anybody, could suddenly turn violent and put them in a life-threatening situation. And it’s true, they could. But what came first, the chicken or the egg? Is America an armed society because everyone is armed to the back teeth, or is everyone in America armed to the back teeth because they live in an armed society? Do American police adopt their ‘shoot on sight’ approach because every suspect is lethally dangerous, or is the lethal danger at least in part a product of police willingness to ‘shoot on sight’?