Judges to review PD for appeals

The Judges of the Court of Appeal intend to review Practice Direction No 3 of 2013, Justice Debra Mullins, President of the Court of Appeal, has advised.

Until the review is complete, practitioners are urged to apply paragraph 34(2) of the PD as if it read:

“(2) Where it is alleged the jury verdicts are inconsistent, unreasonable or not supported by the evidence (amendments in bold):

a) the appellant’s written outline of argument should set out in an annexure which must not exceed 10 pages, where possible, the particulars given by the prosecution and a summary of all relevant evidence, with appeal book references:

b) the respondent’s written outline of argument should indicate what parts of the appellant’s summary of the relevant evidence written outline it accepts and rejects and any additional relevant evidence and provide relevant appeal book references;

c) for the purpose of paragraph 14(5), the Court directs that the annexure to the outline containing the summary of all relevant evidence will not be counted for the page limit of the appellant’s written outline.’’

The move is in response to frequent requests to judges in criminal appeals, where one ground of appeal is the verdict was unreasonable, that the page limit for an appellant’s outline be relaxed.

If the summary of the relevant evidence is in an annexure which has its own separate page limit, it is hoped there should be fewer such requests.