Queensland Consolidated Acts

CRIMINAL CODE 1899 - SECT 564

564 Form of indictment

(1) An indictment is to be intituled with the name of the court in which it is presented, and must, subject to the provisions hereinafter contained, set forth the offence with which the accused person is charged in such a manner, and with such particulars as to the alleged time and place of committing the offence, and as to the person (if any) alleged to be aggrieved, and as to the property (if any) in question, as may be necessary to inform the accused person of the nature of the charge.

(2) If any circumstance of aggravation is intended to be relied upon, it must be charged in the indictment.

(2A) Despite subsection (2) , a relevant circumstance of aggravation may be relied on for the purposes of sentencing an offender for the offence charged in the indictment despite the relevant circumstance of aggravation not being charged in the indictment for the offence.

(3) It is sufficient to describe an offence in the words of this Code or of the statute defining it.

(3A) An indictment for an offence may also state the offence is a domestic violence offence.

Example—

See the Penalties and Sentences Act 1992 , section 12A for when a conviction for the offence must also be recorded as a conviction for a domestic violence offence or entered in the offender’s criminal history as a domestic violence offence.

(3B) An indictment for an offence committed in relation to a pregnant person that allegedly resulted in destroying the life of the person’s unborn child may also state the name, or a description, of the unborn child.

(4) The place of trial is to be named in the margin of the indictment.

(5) In this section—

"relevant circumstance of aggravation" means a circumstance of aggravation that is a previous conviction of the offender.