In
State of New South Wales v Schmidt [2019] NSWSC 764, regarding an extended supervision order ,Hamill J comments
As has become customary in cases of this kind, the State tendered what can only be described as an overwhelming, not to say preposterous, amount of material. How much of this was at the insistence of the lawyers for the defendant I do not know. A great deal of this material was repetitive and superfluous. In percentage terms, by reference to thousands of pages presented to the Court, the parties referred to very little of it. It appeared that every interaction the defendant has had with those supervising him, or running the establishments in which he has resided, was subject to a note that the parties felt compelled to tender into evidence. It would be disingenuous for me to suggest that I have read all of this material closely. I haven’t.
The Judges who regularly preside over these matters are not provided with reading time to scrutinise and examine every document tendered in such matters. Similar complaints have been made by judges in earlier cases. No doubt those complaints, and this one, will have no impact. However, the Crown Solicitor’s Office should consider implementing some kind of protocol that reduces the volume of material tendered. Those appearing for defendants should co-operate to ensure that the amount of material tendered is both sensible in its volume and relevant to the issues in dispute. It is, to speak bluntly, simply dumb and unhelpful to tender every OIMS note made over a three year period. Further, it is of no assistance to the Court to include in the bundles of material multiple copies of the same documents. I was grateful to counsel for the State for providing a schedule which detailed the many duplications, but the better course is for the parties to co-operate to put together a joint tender bundle that does not include duplications and excludes material that is not significant to the matters in dispute.
Having relieved myself of that exasperation, counsel in this matter have provided helpful written and oral submissions, summaries, chronologies and more compendious evidence allowing the Court to focus on the important material and be in a position to make reasoned and informed decisions on the controversial aspects of the case.
Included in the material were reports going back many years which explain the opinions of various experts concerning the defendant’s psychology and pathology as well as providing reasoned assessments as to the extent of his risk of re-offending and the triggers or risk factors that might lead him to re-offend. The material also concerned information about Mr Schmidt’s criminal and custodial history, the remarks on sentence and facts relating to a number of his earlier crimes, and the evidence that was tendered in the sentencing proceedings. There is also evidence concerning his compliance and non-compliance with the extended supervision order imposed by Button J, his engagement with counselling and other rehabilitation services and his behaviour during those periods when he has been in gaol. In a nutshell, the material shows that Mr Schmidt committed two extremely grave and chilling offences of violence some years ago, was punished severely for those crimes, has been at times indifferent or inconsistent with his attempts at rehabilitation and often frustrated at the strictures of the supervision order to which he has been subject since February 2016.
