New South Wales Consolidated Regulations

CRIMINAL PROCEDURE REGULATION 2017 - REG 25

25 Short briefs of evidence required in certain circumstances

(1) The object of this clause is to reduce the time spent by police officers in producing statements of non-material witnesses for inclusion in certain briefs of evidence and, accordingly, a court is to have regard to that object when exercising its functions under this clause.

(2) This clause applies only to proceedings for summary offences (including proceedings for indictable offences specified in Table 2 to Schedule 1 to the Act that are being dealt with summarily) for which a brief of evidence is required to be served under section 183 of the Act.

(3) In this clause,
"prescribed statement" means, in relation to a brief of evidence required to be served under section 183 of the Act in proceedings, a statement of a non-material witness, including the following--

(a) a police officer who provides evidence that the preconditions of the exercise of a power have been satisfied or establishes that the evidence on which the prosecutor relies was obtained in accordance with the law (for example, the custody manager who cautions the accused person under Part 9 of the Law Enforcement (Powers and Responsibilities) Act 2002 ),

(b) a police officer who was responsible for the movement of, or recording the movement of, a thing connected with the offence or the investigation of the offence (for example, a police officer who conveys DNA or a drug sample to the Division of Analytical Laboratories),

(c) a police officer who operated a device that produced or caused the production of a document, photograph, video or any other thing relied on by the prosecutor to prove the prosecution's case,

(d) any other police officer who provides evidence that merely corroborates evidence of another police officer whose statement relates to a process or procedure and is included in the brief of evidence (for example, a police officer, other than the investigating police officer, who was present when the accused person was interviewed),

(e) a person who is a medical practitioner, nurse, paramedic or other health care professional if all the notes of the person (for example, doctor's treatment notes or ambulance officer's checklists) have been included in the brief of evidence.

(4) For the purposes of section 183 (2) of the Act, a brief of evidence need not include the following--

(a) any prescribed statement, but only if the brief includes a list of each prescribed statement that, but for this clause, would need to be included in the brief and a summary of what each listed statement would include,

(b) any document that was served on the accused person or the accused person's legal representative by or on behalf of the prosecutor after the court attendance notice in relation to the offence concerned was served.

(5) On application by the accused person in proceedings, the court may order that any prescribed statement, or any document referred to in subclause (4) (b), be served on the accused person by the prosecutor within a specified time before the hearing if the statement or document was not included in the brief of evidence. The court is to give reasons for the making of the order.

(6) The court may make an order under subclause (5) only if satisfied that--

(a) in the case of a prescribed statement, the making of the order would assist the accused person to respond to the charge or assist the court in determining the matter, or

(b) in the case of a document referred to in subclause (4) (b), the application for the order has been made in good faith.