REGINA v ROWE [1991] NSWCA 300

REGINA v ROWE

SUPREME COURT OF NEW SOUTH WALES COURT OF CRIMINAL APPEAL

KirBy P, HANDLEY JA and Hunt AJA 24 December 1991, 24 December 1991

[1991] NSWCA 300

PRACTICE and PROCEDURE — bail — prisoner awaiting sentence — should be referred to Court of Appeal. CRIMINAL LAW and PROCEDURE — bail — trial judge postpones sentence — prisoner remanded in custody — facts material to bail later appear during Long Vacation — application to Supreme Court for bail referred to Court of Appeal — HELD: (Hunt AJA; Handley P and Handley JA concurring) (1) Where the judge of trial of the District Court has not granted bail and bail is sought from the Supreme Court for a prisoner awaiting sentence the application should be removed to the Court of Appeal; (2) On the evidence in bail should be granted on terms.

Hunt AJA This is an application by Travis Murray Rowe for bail pending the imposition of a sentence upon him in the District Court. It initially came before me in the Common Law Division yesterday, and was removed by me into the Court of Appeal pursuant to SCR Pt12 R2(1)(b).

The circumstances which led to that procedure being adopted by me are that the applicant was committed to the District Court upon charges of assault with intent to rob and alternatively of assault occasioning actual bodily harm. He pleaded guilty to the less serious charge and that plea was accepted by the Crown in full satisfaction of the indictment. He then came before Judge Saunders QC for sentence and was remanded by his Honour in custody until 6 February 1992.

The application which was made to me for bail was clearly within the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, but the practice adopted by the Supreme Court (since as long ago as 1979), where an applicant is already the subject of a refusal of bail by a judge of either the District Court or the Supreme Court during a trial or pending sentence, has been for the single judge before whom the application comes to decline to exercise that jurisdiction, but (if there be circumstances shown which may be thought to justify a reconsideration of bail) to remove the application into the Court of Appeal.