Amendments and Failed Amendments
Section 14 of the Crimes Act 1961 allowed death sentences. However, due to growing general public opposition to the death penalty, reformist New Zealand National Party Minister of Justice Ralph Hanan and other National MPs exercised a conscience vote and voted with the abolitionist New Zealand Labour Party to forbid judges passing sentence of death other than in cases of treason. This was the functional abolition in New Zealand, with no one executed after this date. In 1989, the death penalty was formally abolished by the Fourth Labour Government.
Section 187A of the Crimes Act was inserted in 1978. It provides access criteria for abortion in New Zealand and is the subject of perennial debates between the Abortion Law Reform Association of New Zealand (pro-choice) and the New Zealand anti-abortion movement over greater restriction, maintenance and complete decriminalisation of abortion.
The Homosexual Law Reform Act 1986 amended the Crimes Act, allowing for consensual homosexual relationships between men.
In 2003, the Prostitution Law Reform Act 2003 decriminalised sex work, removing sections 147-149A of the Crimes Act, which had formerly prohibited most forms of prostitution in New Zealand through maintaining criminal penalties against soliciting, living off the proceeds of sex work, brothel-keeping and managing sex workers.
The Crimes (Substituted Section 59) Amendment Act 2007 abolished Section 59 of the Crimes Act, which had previously allowed parental corporal punishment of children, despite opposition from religious social conservatives and others.
Sections 50 and 169 dealt with the provocation defense, the so-called "gay panic" defence. Often used by killers of gay men to avoid murder convictions, it was abolished through multipartisan consent in 2009. The only party not to support this was ACT New Zealand, acting under the advice of ACT MP, lawyer, and criminal David Garrett.
Section 123 of the Crimes Act deals with blasphemy. Unlike the United Kingdom, New Zealand has not yet abolished this moribund "offence". In practise, charges can only be brought through permission of the New Zealand Solicitor-General, which is usually not forthcoming, given modern religious pluralism and free speech sensibilities.
Section 144A of the Crimes Act deals with New Zealand pedophiles that commit acts of child sexual abuse in overseas jurisdictions through child sex tourism. It applies existing prohibitions against sexual connection and indecent acts with children under twelve and young people to children within overseas jurisdictions. Under Section 144C, it is also illegal to promote child sex tourism overseas from New Zealand.
Section 204A outlaws female genital mutilation within New Zealand, while Section 204B deals with ancillary and related offences.
There have been two attempts thus far to introduce regulated euthanasia in New Zealand through abolition of Section 179 of the Crimes Act 1961 and replacement with a liberalised regulatory regime, in 1995 and 2003. Both failed
Read more about this topic: Crimes Act 1961
Famous quotes containing the words amendments and/or failed:
“Both of us felt more anxiety about the South—about the colored people especially—than about anything else sinister in the result. My hope of a sound currency will somehow be realized; civil service reform will be delayed; but the great injury is in the South. There the Amendments will be nullified, disorder will continue, prosperity to both whites and colored people will be pushed off for years.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)