Page 446 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 8 March 2011
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guilty; or they may be convicted of the offence. Each has a technical and slightly different legal meaning. It is enough to summarise that each signifies the end of the court’s work in determining whether an offence has been committed and that they are appropriate times at which a victim impact statement may be tendered.
Through amendment 10, the crime of receiving stolen property is also updated. The current definition of stolen property means that only the initial receiver of the goods can be found guilty of the crime. As the explanatory statement makes clear, the original intent of parliament was for the crime of receiving stolen property to apply to all subsequent receivers, whether they are first or second or fifth in line. The amendment applies a revised definition of stolen property to achieve this original intent.
An important question here is just how many times can stolen property change hands before the person is not committing a crime, because of course it is possible to imagine a situation where someone unwittingly buys stolen property, perhaps over eBay or at a market. Are these people wrapped up in the new expanded crime of receiving stolen property? Happily, this is not the case.
The important mental element of the crime remains the same, and this is that the accused person must be proven to have reasonably suspected the goods to be stolen. Evidence will need to be tendered to show why the accused had the reasonable suspicion that the goods were in fact stolen. If that cannot be proven, then they will be rightly found not guilty. This test makes the expansion of the crime appropriate and as the Assembly originally intended.
The Greens support the remainder of the bill which, through amendments 11 and 12, adds an alternative verdict to the charge of trafficking of a controlled drug. This allows the court to find the accused not guilty of trafficking but guilty of lower level possession offences as opposed to the current situation which may require the DPP to bring a second, fresh prosecution for those lower level offences. Alternative verdicts are used where the lower level offence is a required element of the more serious offence and are used throughout the criminal code, especially in relation to drug offences.
The Greens support the concept of alternative verdicts on the basis that they do not represent a scattergun approach to prosecution; rather, they reflect the hierarchy of specific offences and it would be counterproductive and time consuming to require fresh prosecutions to be brought in those specific instances.
In conclusion, the Greens support this bill. It makes a number of important changes to the ACT’s criminal laws, all of which are well thought through and carefully aligned with key legal principles and concepts.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for the Environment, Climate Change and Water, Minister for Energy and Minister for Police and Emergency Services) (10.18), in reply: I thank members for their comments on this bill. As has been discussed today, the Crimes Legislation Amendment Bill will enact seven essential amendments to criminal laws in the territory. One of the most
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