Pupillage: Criminal Procedure and Evidence

B Proc LLB BA hons (psyc) PhD
Advocate of the High Court of South Africa – Johannesburg Bar
Visiting Associate Professor of Law, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
Co-author of the Commentary on the Criminal Procedure Act.

James has lectured and specialises in criminal law and delict with particular emphasis on the implications of the Constitution on both areas of law. He completed his psychology honours on the moral reasoning of Moses Sithole, South Africa’s most notorious serial killer.

His PhD is entitled The Responsible Mind in South African Criminal Law and concerns the elucidation of the conditions for criminal responsibility – in criminal law known as the requirement of voluntariness and criminal capacity.

James is anticipating – with Juta – that his PhD will be published this year (2018) as a book on criminal responsibility, entitled: The Responsible Mind in South African Criminal Law. Although directed at criminal law in particular, it is equally relevant to problems of free-will and responsibility in all fields of law, including delict, contract, administrative law – and, of course, Constitutional law. It is no accident that James proposes that the ultimate standard and test for responsibility is whether a person could observe the obligations placed on him or her under the Constitution.

James is also a proud co-author of the leading text: Du Toit et al, Commentary on the Criminal Procedure Act.

Practice Areas:

• criminal law;
• law of delict;
• administrative law;
• constitutional law; and
• contract.

He has been in practice since Dec 2015. He assisted the state in the prosecution of Oscar Pistorius in the appeal, by the state, to the Supreme Court of Appeal – where the culpable homicide conviction of Mr Pistorius was successfully appealed and converted to one of murder (DPP, Gauteng v Pistorius [2015] ZASCA 204).

Teaching

He has lectured criminology, the law of delict, criminal procedure, criminal law and the law of evidence. He has published in the areas of psychological development, the law of delict, the law of evidence, criminal law, and constitutional law, and has addressed international conferences on the compatibility of determinism, neuroscience and criminal responsibility, and the effect of emotion on moral reasoning and criminal responsibility.