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S V Whitehead
{{Short description, South African legal case In ''S v Whitehead'', an important case in South African criminal procedure, the appellants were convicted of public violence and culpable homicide and, in the case of the seventh appellant, of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm. The charges arose from an incident in which a group of men attacked striking municipal workers in a rural town. In the course of the attack, one of the workers was assaulted with a blunt instrument and later died of his injuries. The court held that there was no infallible formula to determine whether or not there had been a duplication of convictions. The various tests formulated by the courts were not rules of law, and nor were they exhaustive. They were simply useful practical guidelines and, if they failed to provide a satisfactory answer, the matter was correctly left to the common sense, wisdom, experience and sense of fairness of the court. The court considered both tests and held that * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countries of Namibia, Botswana, and Zimbabwe; and to the east and northeast by Mozambique and Eswatini. It also completely enclaves the country Lesotho. It is the southernmost country on the mainland of the Old World, and the second-most populous country located entirely south of the equator, after Tanzania. South Africa is a biodiversity hotspot, with unique biomes, plant and animal life. With over 60 million people, the country is the world's 24th-most populous nation and covers an area of . South Africa has three capital cities, with the executive, judicial and legislative branches of government based in Pretoria, Bloemfontein, and Cape Town respectively. The largest city is Johannesburg. About 80% of the population are Black Sou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Criminal Procedure In South Africa
Criminal procedure in South Africa refers to the adjudication process of that country's criminal law. It forms part of procedural or adjectival law, and describes the means by which its substantive counterpart, South African criminal law, is applied. It has its basis mainly in English law. History When the British occupied the Cape permanently in 1806, they retained the Roman-Dutch legal system. They concluded, however, that the criminal justice system was archaic, and so introduced one based on their own in 1828. It has been developed over the years to suit local conditions. The South African system today is basically accusatorial: that is, the state accuses and the accused defends. The accusation and its proof are state-driven, with a state-appointed prosecuting authority. Sources The sources of South African criminal procedure lie in the Constitution, the Criminal Procedure Act, 1977 (CPA), other statute law (for example, the Magistrates' Courts Act, 1944, the Supre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Culpable Homicide
Culpable homicide is a categorisation of certain offences in various jurisdictions within the Commonwealth of Nations The Commonwealth of Nations, simply referred to as the Commonwealth, is a political association of 56 member states, the vast majority of which are former territories of the British Empire. The chief institutions of the organisation are the ... which involves the illegal killing of a person either with or without an intention to kill depending upon how a particular jurisdiction has defined the offence. Unusually for those legal systems which have originated or been influenced during rule by the United Kingdom, the name of the offence associates with Scots law rather than English law. Jurisdictions "Culpable homicide" offences are found in the following jurisdictions; the description of the local version of the offence is given where available: Canada In Canada, "culpable homicide" is not itself an offence. Rather, the term is used in the Criminal Co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Assault
An assault is the act of committing physical harm or unwanted physical contact upon a person or, in some specific legal definitions, a threat or attempt to commit such an action. It is both a crime and a tort and, therefore, may result in criminal prosecution, civil liability, or both. Generally, the common law definition is the same in criminal and tort law. Traditionally, common law legal systems have separate definitions for assault and battery. When this distinction is observed, battery refers to the actual bodily contact, whereas assault refers to a credible threat or attempt to cause battery. Some jurisdictions combined the two offences into a single crime called "assault and battery", which then became widely referred to as "assault". The result is that in many of these jurisdictions, assault has taken on a definition that is more in line with the traditional definition of battery. The legal systems of civil law and Scots law have never distinguished assault from batt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grievous Bodily Harm
Grievous bodily harm (often abbreviated to GBH) is a term used in English criminal law to describe the severest forms of battery. It refers to two offences that are created by sections 18 and 20 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861. The distinction between these two sections is the requirement of specific intent for section 18; the offence under section 18 is variously referred to as "wounding with intent" or "causing grievous bodily harm with intent", Archbold Criminal Pleading, Evidence and Practice, 1999, paragraph 19-201 at page 1614 whereas the offence under section 20 is variously referred to as "unlawful wounding", "malicious wounding" or "inflicting grievous bodily harm". Statute Section 18 This section now reads: The words omitted in the first to third places specifically included shooting or attempting to shoot, and included some words considered redundant; they were repealed by section 10(2) of, and Part III of Schedule 3 to, the Criminal Law Act 1967. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Strike Action
Strike action, also called labor strike, labour strike, or simply strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to Labor (economics), work. A strike usually takes place in response to grievance (labour), employee grievances. Strikes became common during the Industrial Revolution, when Labour economics, mass labor became important in factories and mines. As striking became a more common practice, governments were often pushed to act (either by private business or by union workers). When government intervention occurred, it was rarely neutral or amicable. Early strikes were often deemed unlawful conspiracies or anti-competitive cartel action and many were subject to massive legal repression by state police, federal military power, and federal courts. Many Western nations legalized striking under certain conditions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Strikes are sometimes used to pressure governments to change policies. Occasionally, strikes destabilize ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Court
A court is any person or institution, often as a government institution, with the authority to Adjudication, adjudicate legal disputes between Party (law), parties and carry out the administration of justice in Civil law (common law), civil, Criminal law, criminal, and Administrative law, administrative matters in accordance with the rule of law. In both common law and civil law (legal system), civil law legal systems, courts are the central means for dispute resolution, and it is generally understood that all people have an ability to bring their claims before a court. Similarly, the Rights of the accused, rights of those accused of a crime include the right to present a Criminal defense, defense before a court. The system of courts that interprets and applies the law is collectively known as the judiciary. The place where a court sits is known as a Venue (law), venue. The room where court proceedings occur is known as a courtroom, and the building as a courthouse; court facil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Evidence
Evidence for a proposition is what supports this proposition. It is usually understood as an indication that the supported proposition is true. What role evidence plays and how it is conceived varies from field to field. In epistemology, evidence is what justifies beliefs or what makes it rational to hold a certain doxastic attitude. For example, a perceptual experience of a tree may act as evidence that justifies the belief that there is a tree. In this role, evidence is usually understood as a private mental state. Important topics in this field include the questions of what the nature of these mental states is, for example, whether they have to be propositional, and whether misleading mental states can still qualify as evidence. In phenomenology, evidence is understood in a similar sense. Here, however, it is limited to intuitive knowledge that provides immediate access to truth and is therefore indubitable. In this role, it is supposed to provide ultimate justifications fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
South African Criminal Law Reports
Case citation is a system used by legal professionals to identify past court case decisions, either in series of books called reporters or law reports, or in a neutral style that identifies a decision regardless of where it is reported. Case citations are formatted differently in different jurisdictions, but generally contain the same key information. A legal citation is a "reference to a legal precedent or authority, such as a case, statute, or treatise, that either substantiates or contradicts a given position." Where cases are published on paper, the citation usually contains the following information: * Court that issued the decision * Report title * Volume number * Page, section, or paragraph number * Publication year In some report series, for example in England, Australia and some in Canada, volumes are not numbered independently of the year: thus the year and volume number (usually no greater than 4) are required to identify which book of the series has the case repor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
