In Victoria, voice identification evidence is admissible without requiring proof of the witness's prior familiarity with the accused's voice or distinctiveness of the voice; these are matters of weight for the jury, not preconditions to admissibility. The NSW approach in R v [name withheld] requiring familiarity or distinctiveness does not represent the law in Victoria. In circumstantial cases where voice similarity evidence is one strand, a direction that two suspect identifications cannot bolster each other is not required.
The full text is available to signed-in members, including the 13 later cases that cite this judgment.
3 of the 13 citing cases carry a classified treatment. How each court treated it is available to signed-in members.