The Journal of Criminal Law

A 10-year prohibition against a defendant from owning or exercising authority over any animals has been upheld by the New Zealand Court of Appeal in an animal hoarding case which has progressed through the New Zealand legal system over the past 5 years.

This comment reviews the Court of Appeal decision (Kondratyeva v R CA6/2015 2015] NZCA 266 [23 June 2015]) and explores the increasing evidence of a mental health component in animal hoarding behaviour. It also discusses the stress and burden that animal hoarding cases places on the shelters that have the legal responsibility for prosecuting animal cruelty cases in New Zealand.

The ruling in R v Brown that consent could not be a defence to actual bodily harm or more serious injury unless a recognised exemption applied has been much criticised. When considered exclusively in light of adult sexual activity, such criticisms may appear extremely persuasive. However, the issue of assault within exorcism reveals that there are other contexts in which the arguments appear more complex. This article examines the criminal law relating to consent and exorcism and asks how we should deal with the interplay between the general and the specific when it comes to formulating legal policy.

The present paper constitutes an attempt towards questioning the adequacy of the prevalent approached employed by Islamic jurisprudence and statute law in dealing with mens rea and its manifestations. It also provides a kind of reinterpretation of the concept since it attaches itself to the perspective that the concepts employed in criminal law need evolution in order to preserve their function and practicality; the conditions appertaining thereto necessitating adaptability of the concepts with the contextual conditions as well as the principles of the criminal law. Under criminal law, mens rea is referred to as ‘criminal intent or the state of mind indicating culpability which is required by statute as an element of a crime’ (see, for example, Staples v United States, 511 US 600 (1994)). Under Islamic jurisprudence it is defined as ‘rebellion intent’. These conceptualisations of the mens rea may be subject to evolution as well as the other concepts. The present paper provides a reformulation of these definitions wherein mens rea is considered to be ‘the culpable linkage of mind with the forbidden conduct’. Through this reformulation the author replaces the ‘state’ with ‘linkage’ presupposing that the interpretation of the term ‘culpable’, as an independent constituent, shall vary according to the provisions of common sense and the contextual conditions.

The tension between an individual’s right to a fair trial and a state’s prerogative to withhold information where it is in the national interest to do so is an issue which is especially relevant in preventative detention cases. In a string of cases since 2009, lower courts have interpreted the ‘gisting’ requirement imposed by the Grand Chamber in A v United Kingdom in response to this problem. This paper will consider the jurisprudence of the lower courts and will argue that the House of Lords’ judgment in AF No. 3 imposed requirements not only in relation to the amount of information that must be disclosed, but also in relation to what that information must consist of. It will note that two irreconcilable interpretations of A have developed, and argue that one of those approaches is incompatible with AF. Finally, it will discuss the interaction between these decisions and the statutory framework of the JSA, especially ss 6(5) and 7(2), and will consider the consequences of the judicial uncertainty in this area in relation to the return of TPIMs following the CTSA.