The Court of Appeal held that the correctness standard, not the House v The King standard, applies to appellate review of s 138(1) Evidence Act 2008 determinations, because the provision is mandatory rather than discretionary and demands a unique outcome. On the merits, the Court upheld the trial judge's refusal to exclude evidence obtained from an unauthorised police search of a mobile phone, finding the gravity of the impropriety was low where the officer accessed the phone in a genuine belief it was lawful and solely to determine whether the phone's owner was a crime victim, not to investigate him as a suspect. The high probative value of the evidence, its critical importance to the prosecution, and the seriousness of the charges (firearms manufacturing, drug trafficking) materially outweighed the undesirability of admitting evidence obtained through what amounted to a trespass to goods and breach of Charter privacy rights.
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