a Criminal Justice Bill. Sir Hartley Shawcross Attorney-General, moved that the House should disagree with the Lords' amendment to delete Clause I (suspension of the death penalty for murder). He urged the merits of the Government's proposal to recognize two categories of murder?the capital and non-capital. He thought that juries would have no difficulty in deciding whether a murder came into o...

There is at present a good deal of alarm, both in government and the community generally, concerning the level of violence in Australian society. Although the incidence of murder has in fact remained quite stable for many years, it remains the subject of widespread public anxiety and persistent media coverage. Serial murder in particular, because of its savagery and apparently random nature, ca...