Parsons v The Queen [1957] HCA 75

High Court of Australia Dixon C.J. McTiernan, Webb, Kitto and Taylor JJ. Parsons v The Queen [1957] HCA 75

ORDER Application for special leave to appeal refused.

Cur. adv. vult.

The following written judgments were delivered:—

Nov. 18 Dixon C.J., Kitto and Taylor JJ.

This is an application for special leave to appeal from an order of the Supreme Court sitting as a Court of Criminal Appeal [1] . The order dismissed an appeal from a conviction of murder. It is not necessary to say much concerning the facts of the case. The murder was committed on 4th July 1956. The applicant, a married man of about fifty-nine years of age, had been living for two or three years apart from his wife with a woman named Pearl Lyons. On the morning of that day he fired three shots with a loaded rifle in a room of the flat where they lived. One of these shots killed the woman Lyons, another grazed his own head. At his trial he made a case of provocation but he was convicted of murder. His appeal to the Court of Criminal Appeal was based on three grounds. The first ground was that on the empanelling of the jury after his arraignment he had been allowed only eight peremptory challenges and that he ought to have been allowed up to twenty. The second ground concerned the direction given by the learned judge to the jury concerning provocation. The third ground related to the production of fresh evidence bearing upon the ground of provocation. The Supreme Court decided all three matters against the appellant. In support of the application to this Court for special leave on his behalf all three grounds are relied upon. Little need be said concerning the second and third grounds. They could not form an adequate foundation for the application. The criticisms made of the summing-up to the jury are not of such character that they would warrant this Court in giving special leave to appeal for the purpose of considering the direction. As to the fresh evidence, the reasons given by the Supreme Court for declining to order a new trial on the ground of its having been brought forward by the appellant since the trial are ample and open to no objection that really affects their validity. It would be contrary to the principles guiding this Court in such matters for the Court to intervene and give special leave to appeal for the purpose of reconsidering the propriety of the refusal of a new trial on that ground.