23 January 2012

Running out of magistrates

| johnboy
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The Greens’ Shane Rattenbury is asking the Government to pull their fingers out and get busy appointing new magistrates following the retirement of Maria Doogan and Grant Lalor going on indefinite medical leave.

“The Government needs to respond to this unscheduled retirement by prioritising the appointment process to fill the vacancy,” Mr Rattenbury said.

“If process is left to drift along the busy court will be left at reduced capacity and there will be a risk of a new case backlog developing.

“It is important that the Government take all reasonable steps to avoid what we saw in 2007 where the Supreme Court lost two of its judges in a matter of days.

“Some in the legal profession believe the 2007 departures and the time it took the court to get back to full capacity are partly responsible for the court backlog that exists today.

“The Greens do not want to see history repeat itself and urge the Attorney General to focus on this and find a good appointment as a matter of priority” Mr Rattenbury concluded.

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Re the appeal on the assault cases – the CT reported that the magistrate erred in not taking into account the ‘family circumstances’ of one of the convicted men.

It must be a great consolation to people who are assaulted with metal bars to know that the ‘family circumstances’ of the thug who does it are relevant to the penalty imposed. So, crims, get your girlfriend preggers before you thump someone – thereby spreading your valuable genes further into the population and lightening your sentence at the same time!

Sheesh.

EvanJames said :

If they’d get serious and impose actual punishments on criminals, they’d have less work to do and wouldn’t be buggering off on “medical leave”. Try a Guiliani, it might just work.

Nah, they like to reverse ‘harsh’ punishments instead….
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-02-10/act-court-of-appeal-assault-sentences/3822566

If they’d get serious and impose actual punishments on criminals, they’d have less work to do and wouldn’t be buggering off on “medical leave”. Try a Guiliani, it might just work.

I rejoice that Lalor is going.
That man is just rude.

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