High Court of Australia
IN THE HIGH COURT OF AUSTRALIA
GUERIN.
Vv.
THE QUEEN
REASONS FOR JUDGMENT
Oral Judgment delivered at.
on ....
'A.C. Brooks, Government Printer, Melbourne csoraye6
Ve
Application for special leave refused.
JUDGMENT (ORAL)
LE
Ve
UE:
BARWICK C.J
Ve
THE QUEEN
The applicant has raised a-number of matters as grounds for the, grant of special leave and we have fully heard his counsel and considered his submissions.
To my mind none but one of the criticisms of "the Trial Judge or of his summing up has any substance in relation to the grant of special leave: but one has troubled me, namely, the submission that there ought to have been a direction given to the jury that if they were prepared to believe the account given by the accused of the events as the result of which the deceased died, an account not given by the accused in court but only in statements made by him to police officers, they could find a verdict of manslaughter on the footing of- provocation, assuming of course the presence of all the elements called for by sec. 23 of the Crimes | Act, in respect of which no doubt in that event appropriate directions would have been given.
The Court of Criminal Appeal decided that there was in any case no material in these statements rit to be left to the jury as a basis for such a finding. I observe that to an extent this conclusion of the Court
of Criminal Appeal derives from the views of its members
upon some questions of fact which it might be said rather lay within the province of the jury, but otherwise it is
not said that the Court of Criminal Appeal misdirected
2.
itself as to any matter of law in respect to a verdict of manslaughter based on provocation.
Consequently the narrow question which in this respect the applicant's motion raised, is whether or not there was in this case evidence of all the elements of a defence of provocation proper to be submitted to the jury. No matter of general principle is involved in the resolution of that question in this case, it depends entirely upon the particular circumstances of the case.
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