R v Wayne Rodney SCHNEIDER (No 3) [2010] NSWDC 9

Reported Decision : 10 DCLR (NSW) 9

New South Wales District Court

CITATION: R v Wayne Rodney SCHNEIDER (No 3) [2010] NSWDC 9

HEARING DATE(S): 10 - 11 February

JUDGMENT DATE: 11 February 2010

JURISDICTION: District Court Criminal

JUDGMENT OF: Berman SC DCJ

DECISION: Evidence not admitted

CATCHWORDS: CRIMINAL LAW - Judgment - Admissibility of evidence - Evidence of flight

PARTIES: The Crown Wayne Rodney Schneider

FILE NUMBER(S): DC 2009/8191

COUNSEL: Ms T Smith - Crown Mr C Heliotis QC, Mr A Djemal - Defendant

SOLICITORS: Director of Public Prosecutions Galloways - Defendant

JUDGMENT

1 HIS HONOUR: Much of the last few days has been taken up with the question of whether the Crown should be entitled to rely on evidence of flight before the jury.

2 It seems that soon after the events of 11 February 2006 the appellant learnt from rumours at his workplace and from his friends that he was a suspect in the shooting. He approached a number of lawyers and arrangements were made for him to hand himself in. But instead of that occurring he fled, making efforts to cover his tracks. The authorities heard nothing from him until some eighteen months later when the accused, who was then living in South Australia, contacted a South Australian lawyer. Arrangements were made for him to surrender himself to South Australian police. He was granted bail and he voluntarily came back to New South Wales where he turned himself in to New South Wales police.

3 A great deal of the evidence that I have heard concerns the events of early March. The accused relies on those events as demonstrating that he had a reason for absconding that was unrelated to a consciousness of guilt. I do not need to set out that evidence in any detail at all. I will however say that I do not accept that that was the reason for his initial flight. It is not the law that an accused person can cause Crown evidence to be rejected simply by claiming a need to introduce prejudicial evidence to rebut it. And so if I was looking only at the question of initial flight I would say that I do not accept the appellant's evidence on that and would have allowed the Crown to call the evidence it wished. However the situation is entirely different regarding an explanation that the accused offered for his continued absence.