In Victoria, where the question arises whether a witness is an accomplice, the accused bears the onus of establishing that fact on the balance of probabilities. An accessory after the fact is not an accomplice whose status automatically attracts a warning, but if the accessory has a motive to give false testimony, the jury should be warned. The existence of corroboration does not remove an accomplice's motive to lie, and a direction suggesting otherwise would be a misdirection. Evidence of earlier attempts on a victim's life, where part of a continuing campaign, is not propensity evidence requiring a warning but rather contextual evidence of the circumstances of the offence.
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