An indictment charging a simple offence in the District Court is a nullity as to that count, and neither s 602A nor s 622 of the Criminal Code (WA) confers jurisdiction. The failure of the accused to raise a plea to jurisdiction does not cure the defect. However, the wrongful inclusion of a nullity count does not necessarily cause a fundamental miscarriage of the trial on a valid count if the evidence relating to the nullity count would have been admissible at a trial of the valid count alone.
The full text is available to signed-in members, including the 5 later cases that cite this judgment.
1 of the 5 citing cases carry a classified treatment. How each court treated it is available to signed-in members.