Assault & violence offences
Don’t punch anyone.
That’s not the only way to commit an assault (there’s kicking also, of course), but it is the first one we think about when we read the word assault.
Any time you cause any part of your body to touch any part of someone else’s in a way they have not consented to, you are exposing yourself to a charge of assault.
Here’s something you probably didn’t know: you can assault someone without even touching them. I don’t want this to read like tips — more like a warning. Because you are committing an assault if you ‘cause someone to fear immediate and unlawful violence’ — this can be done by angrily raising your fist at someone, throwing something at someone (yes, even if it misses), pointing a fake gun at someone, or even shouting threats at someone while aggressively moving toward them.
Correct — the next time someone says, ‘Come at me, bro’ — you could be committing an assault by coming at them, depending on the circumstances.
Here are some different types of assault:
Common Assault (2-year max penalty) is named that because it really is the most common, and it really does have a 2-year max penalty. It happens any time you’ve committed an assault that hasn’t necessarily caused any injury — any time you’ve punched someone in a bar fight or rugby fight, spat on someone, purposefully tripped someone over, or even — as you’ve learned above — told someone you’re going to smash them while moving toward them intimidatingly.
Assault occasioning Actual Bodily Harm (5-year max penalty) really jumps up in penalty because it jumps up in seriousness. This occurs when you’ve assaulted someone and it causes an injury of some kind — bruises, grazes, cuts, swelling or redness that lasts a few days, or even minor fractures of the bone — the main thing is that the injury is ‘more than merely transient or trifling’. That’s for a Judge to decide, but very possibly with the help of medical experts.
Reckless Infliction of Grievous Bodily Harm (10-year max penalty) is almost fully explained in the name, as many of these are. You expose yourself to being charged and found guilty of this offence whenever you behave in such a way that causes grievous (meaning serious) bodily harm (meaning injury) to someone (meaning someone), and even though you didn’t mean to do it, a reasonable person would have known that their behaviour had a real risk of doing it.
Examples of Grievous Bodily Harm (called GBH by lawyers and Judges because we think we’re cool) are permanent or serious disfigurement, broken bones or serious fractures, a serious disease, destruction of a foetus, or any other harm to someone’s body which seriously endangers their life.
Wounding or Grievous Bodily Harm (25-year max penalty) is considered much more serious for good reason — because you intended to cause this level of harm. While GBH is already explained, a wounding occurs when the first two layers of the skin (dermis and epidermis) are broken. Broken here usually just means cut with something. This is why you were always told not to run with scissors — because your teachers were scared you might develop the desire to stab one of your classmates.
Assault occasioning Death (20-year max penalty) is something we’ve all heard of. The classic example is of two fellows who get rowdy in a pub after a few VBs and get into a little scuffle, the likes of which that bar has seen a dozen times in the last dozen nights. However, on this occasion, when one of them lands a blow on the other, sending him to the deck, the fellow never gets back up. Maybe the impact of the fist did it, or maybe it was the impact with the ground — either way it’s a tragedy that Courts rightly see as avoidable.
Most if not all types of assault have increased maximum penalties for when they’re committed in company of at least one other person. Experiences of assault can differ depending on the circumstances. Please ask your lawyer before committing assault and then don’t do it. Don’t have a lawyer? It’s okay, one of them just left their number here on the floor — 0433 993 622.
Murder and Manslaughter
Avoid this, if you can.
There are not too many offences that have a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. For reasons you can probably guess, murder has earned it.
Our great country hanged its last murderer in 1967, and since then we’ve just put them in jail with the people who drive while disqualified.
A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that any time someone loses their life, they’ve been murdered. This is incorrect, as there are many events that can end in someone’s unfortunate death without a murder having occurred.
Murder requires intent. To prove that you have murdered someone, the Crown must prove that when you killed someone, you intended to kill them, or at least that you were behaving ‘with reckless indifference to human life’ or that you intended to cause them grievous bodily harm (this just means really serious harm). A lot of people die accidentally, or because someone behaved recklessly. This is why other homicide offences exist — Negligent Driving Occasioning Death, Dangerous Driving Occasioning Death, Manslaughter, or Assault Occasioning Death.
The above are still serious offences which regularly land people in jail, but they are less serious than murder, as they generally happen accidentally, as a result of reckless behaviour.
Even though the word sounds much more serious, manslaughter is less serious than murder because it doesn’t carry with it the potential for life imprisonment (unless, being sentenced to jail for it, you happen to die in prison).
Manslaughter is strange because it’s defined more by what it’s not than by what it is. Section 18(1)(a) of the Crimes Act 1900 (NSW) defines murder, and then right after it says “every other punishable homicide shall be taken to be manslaughter.” You might worry that this is incredibly broad, and it is. There are a number of different ways to commit manslaughter.
Speak to a lawyer about possible defences to murder and manslaughter charges. And if you don’t have a lawyer, try calling this number and see if one picks up — 0433 993 622.
AVOs & domestic violence
Domestic violence is the interesting story of the last century in this country because of how much attitudes have changed in that time.
Not long enough ago, women were considered the legal property of their husbands, like the coffee table or the farm animals. When they became recognised as people, there was still much work to do in terms of giving them the same rights as men. Incredibly, it was still legal to sexually assault one’s own wife in some parts of this country up until 1994. Historically, that’s like 20 minutes ago.
Courts have fortunately become more aware of the ways that domestic violence ruins lives, and the laws have been changing almost every year to keep up with that growing public understanding.
It’s now harder to get bail and a lot easier to find oneself sentenced to jail for committing domestic violence offences. This shows up in additions like section 4A of the Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act 1999, or the addition of ‘serious domestic violence offences’ to the show cause requirements in the Bail Act, or even the entirely new offences of coercive control. Offences are also considered more serious when committed against someone in the house where they live, where they expect to feel safe, and offences against children are considered more serious than ever.
It commonly includes, but isn’t limited to, assaults, stalking, intimidation, destroying or damaging property, as well as other new offences.
Coercive Control
NSW was recently one of the first states to create a dedicated, standalone criminal offence specifically for coercive control in intimate partner relationships, carrying a maximum penalty of 7 years in prison. The reason for this is that data from the NSW Domestic Violence Death Review Team showed that roughly 99% of intimate partner homicides were preceded by a clear pattern of coercive and controlling behavior.
So now the state is punishing people for that controlling behaviour to let them know that the eye of the law is on them before they commit a murder.
Coercive control can be committed by tracking someone’s location, wielding power of money over them, shaming or degrading them, stopping them from seeing their family or friends, and many other things.
Apprehended Violence Orders (AVOs)
If Police show up to an alleged domestic violence incident and they don’t believe there is enough evidence to ground an actual criminal charge, there is a very real chance that they will still apply for an Apprehended Violence Order (AVO).
AVOs are all different, because the types of conditions on them can be customised to the specific scenario that police believe occurred. Usually, they prevent you from contacting or approaching a specific person, going to a certain place, or doing those things soon after ingesting alcohol or illicit drugs.
When Police apply for an AVO against you and charge you with a criminal offence related to it, the determination of the AVO — deciding whether or not to actually make the orders — will usually be made based on how the criminal charges are determined. If you are found guilty, the Court will usually impose the AVO being sought. If you are not, it may dismiss it.
However, if Police only apply for an AVO against you without criminal charges, you can simply consent to the AVO without making any admissions about what you have or haven’t done. Or you can oppose the AVO, arguing that there is no need for the making of such orders. Although an AVO is never present on one’s criminal history, the imposition of one against you, by consent or otherwise, can harm your ability to hold a firearms licence or security licence, or to do certain other things.
In the realm of domestic violence, the ground is always moving under your feet. If you’ve been charged with an offence or Police apply for an AVO against you, don’t go into court alone — call 0433 993 622.
Sexual offences
The word rape doesn’t pop up in the criminal justice system — it’s all a bit more technical than that.
Sexual offences are considered more seriously than ever before. They keep getting committed because civilisation itself is a performance which requires us to fight our animal instincts, and people regularly lose that fight.
There are different variations of sexual offences.
Sexual Touching (5-year max penalty) used to be called Indecent Assault — it’s when you touch any person on a sexual part of their body, or even when you incite another person to do it. It doesn’t absolutely require the touched body part be of a sexual nature — it doesn’t even require the breasts to be developed! Even a hug, a kiss on the cheek, something even less could be considered sexual if the judge or jury believe that there is an aspect of the act that makes it sexual in nature, including any act from which it is believed that you derived any sexual gratification.
Sexual Intercourse Without Consent (14-year max penalty) is what most people mean when they encounter the word ‘rape’. This is obviously a serious offence — everyone you’ve ever met (in their right minds) regards this kind of thing as among the worst things you can ever do, and judges in courts couldn’t agree more. You will have also heard it called Sexual Assault.
It’s aggravated (meaning ‘made worse’) by how long it lasts, which body parts are affected, and the mental and physical state of the victim.
Consent is a hot topic and always has been — what it means, how it can and ought to be communicated, if it can be implied. There are a lot of rules around it, so the sensible course on a night out will always be to obtain express consent from a partner before doing anything with them. And by express I mean make sure you hear the word ‘Yes’. Try not to find yourself in Court saying, ‘But they didn’t say “No”!’ It’s not a great place to be. The law is clear — just because someone doesn’t resist, it doesn’t mean they’ve consented.
After consent is given, it is not a free for all, no holds barred, all you can eat, etc, because consent can be withdrawn at any stage of a sexual act with or without words.
Consenting to one kind of sexual act does not mean you’ve consented to any other type.
The rules around the world of sex and consent can get awfully complex and finding out that you’ve made the wrong call when it’s too late can result in more than one ruined life. Don’t take the risk — call 0433 993 622.
Drug offences
Doing drugs is naughty.
At least, the law-writers of this country certainly think so. They don’t want you possessing, supplying, manufacturing, cultivating, importing, or driving under the influence of them. Even licking your lips when looking at them will earn you a weird look, but that one’s probably reasonable.
Drugs have their own whole set of laws in NSW — it’s called the Drug Misuse and Trafficking Act 1985, and it includes at the bottom a whole list of all the drugs that you’re not allowed to have, with all their fancy scientific names.
You’ve heard of the most common ones — cannabis, cocaine, GHB, methylamphetamines and all its names. It simply doesn’t matter what you believe (or what John Harb Legal believes) about whether certain drugs should be criminalised.
There are three things that most dictate how serious your drug offence is:
- what you’re doing with it (possession, supply, etc),
- which drug it is (cannabis, cocaine, etc); and,
- how much of the drug was involved.
A person who possesses a gram of cannabis gets fined. A person who imports 100kg of meth is never seen again (because he’s sentenced to jail for a very long time — we don’t have the death penalty anymore).
It’s important to know what counts as possession, what counts as supply — these definitions are oftentimes the difference between being found guilty or not guilty of these offences. A lot of people are not aware that, for example, a mere offer to sell drugs is enough to be found guilty of supplying drugs — even if you never actually intended to sell any drugs, and even if you never even had the drugs you were advertising in the first place!
Fear not — defences are available!
If charged with any drug-related offences, make sure you get a lawyer who doesn’t do drugs himself (many do, unfortunately). Maybe that lawyer’s number is closer to you than you think — 0433 993 622.
Theft, fraud & dishonesty
Was the Boy Who Cried Wolf guilty of a fraud?
Section 192E of the Crimes Act 1900 (NSW) doesn’t simply say, “Commit fraud.” The offence is titled Fraud, but the wording is actually this:
A person who, by any deception, dishonestly obtains property belonging to another, or obtains any financial advantage or causes any financial disadvantage is guilty of the offence of fraud.
That’s what it takes — being dishonest, being deceptive, and getting something of value from someone else, or simply just causing them to lose it.
That means the Boy Who Cried Wolf is not guilty of a fraud — because he didn’t gain any money from it, nor did he cause anyone else to lose any money from it.
Deception is a broad term. It doesn’t just mean saying something that isn’t true, but also concealing something that should be shown to someone to give them the full picture of what’s going on. There are many times when omission — not doing something — is also being dishonest. Not telling someone that the iPhone you’re selling them is not running the right software or has a broken camera is deception.
While you need to be proven to have known you were being dishonest when you were being dishonest, the prosecution need only prove you were reckless in your act of deception.
Examples of fraud are fake online listings on marketplace or eBay (or anywhere else), unauthorised credit card transactions, illegally obtaining and using personal or business identity details, lying to the government in any way to obtain benefit through schemes like carer’s payments or NDIS, altering financial documents, or moving undeclared income off-the-books.
If you’ve been charged with fraud, it’s a good idea to get a lawyer. Fortunately, there’s one who can obtain for you an advantage — 0433 993 622.
Bail applications
Getting bail, avoiding jail.
There’s a lot of time between being charged with a crime and being found Not Guilty of it. Where are you going to spend that waiting time? In jail? Or on bail?
Well, that’s something you’re going to have to convince a judge, and it’s never as easy as it looks.
The seriousness of the offence is a crucial consideration, and can often determine the outcome all on its own. But other important factors include your criminal record, whether you have shown that you can follow court orders in the past, what kind of conditions you can offer, and how much support you have in the community.
A bail application is a complex exercise of balancing risks — a judge needs to feel confident that letting you keep your freedom isn’t going to land them on everyone’s TikTok feed as “the judge that let that one guy out who then killed his wife”. They’re all trying to avoid being that judge, and it costs them nothing to refuse you bail and not take that risk.
You can go for bail in the Local Court where you’re initially charged — but if you’re refused, you can also always go to the Supreme Court, where your chances are often much higher.
You need a lawyer who isn’t too lazy to do the necessary preparation, and who is brave enough to take bold swings in their submissions. If that lawyer is or isn’t on the other side of this phone number — 0433 993 622 — the only way to find out is by calling.
Weapons & firearms offences
Don’t shoot people.
Look, people have very strong beliefs about guns — whether we should be allowed to have them, use them, carry them, defend ourselves with them. But the bottom line that we will all agree on is that guns can be dangerous, and the laws we have around them right now are strict.
Countless people have obtained something thinking it’s a perfectly harmless collectible item — a novelty — and found out that the Weapons Prohibition Act 1998 classifies it as a weapon, and suddenly they’re staring down the barrel (pun intended) of a criminal charge.
Even more people have bought a gel blaster online or from another state believing that it must be perfectly legal, because why would the government allow me to legally purchase a dangerous weapon? Guess what — the Firearms Act 1996 counts these as prohibited firearms, and the law treats them as though they’re real guns. Why? Because they’ve been used before, and can still always be used, to threaten people — people who, in the heat of the moment, cannot tell whether they’re real guns or fake guns.
Weapons Prohibition Orders and Firearms Prohibition Orders can also be ordered against you, even if you’ve never touched either of them in your life. These orders (WPOs and FPOs) can have a restraining effect on your life, and can make life for you very nasty very quickly if you breach any of their rules.
There are legal ways to own dangerous items in this country, and to do so you have to demonstrate that you can be trusted. Hunting and recreation haven’t been outlawed, but to take part in them you need to be a strict rule abider. Learn the laws and live by them.
If you get caught up in any weapons or gun trouble, it’s probably a good idea to shoot me a text — 0433 993 622.
Mental health applications
We’re not all the same.
We have a duty, as a society, to take care of those who don’t have it as easy as us, who make decisions with different influences, who find each day a little harder.
The criminal law doesn’t ignore your mental health as a determinative factor in a tragic day.
Sections 14 and 19 Applications under the Mental Health and Cognitive Impairment Forensic Provisions Act 2020 (NSW) allow you to be diverted from the regular criminal justice system. When granted, the Court is effectively saying that it doesn’t believe you ought to be punished in the same way as someone who hadn’t been affected by significant enough mental health issues.
The applications operate with the Judge considering two tests for you to pass:
- Are you eligible? Meaning, do you have, or did you have at the time of the alleged offence, a clinically diagnosed mental health impairment or a cognitive impairment.
- Is it appropriate to divert you? If this sounds like too vague a question, it’s because it is. Law isn’t like maths, where you can add up some numbers and come to the right answer. And each Judge will handle a matter differently.
These applications are always an option to be considered, even if they’re not always appropriate to make. Sometimes the offence is too serious, sometimes the criminal record is too long. But these types of applications are granted every day across every Court in Sydney, and with the appropriate medical evidence, it may be a justifiable application to grant for you.
Most importantly, these applications can be made without entering a plea of guilty or not guilty.
Into the more serious matters, mental health issues and cognitive disability can be so significant as to render you unfit to stand trial, or not guilty by virtue of mental illness.
When navigating these issues, it’s wise to have a lawyer who understands the intricacies, and has fought on this battleground an uncountable number of times before — 0433 993 622.
Appeals
Judges are human, too.
They don’t always get it right. If they did, there’d be no reason for higher courts to exist.
But you will have noticed already that our courts work in a hierarchy.
- The Local Court
- The District Court
- The Supreme Court and Court of Criminal Appeal
- The High Court
And whenever you receive a decision about almost anything in any court, you almost always have the option of asking the next highest court to check the work. That’s your right as an Australian citizen. And it’s called an Appeal.
You can appeal the decision to find you guilty — this is called a conviction appeal — but you can also appeal the decision to hand down a specific punishment — this is called a severity appeal.
But Courts all work differently — each with their own rules about how things ought to be done, about what needs to be proven or done to have a successful appeal. It can all get rather complicated, but a lawyer can make it easy — 0433 993 622.
