Search and Surveillance Act 2012

Enforcement officers' powers and orders - Surveillance device warrants and declaratory orders - Carrying out authorised surveillance activities and evidential material relevant to other offences

57: Admissibility of evidential material relevant to other offences

You could also call this:

"Using evidence of another crime in court"

When you are investigating a crime, you might find evidence of another crime. This can happen if you have a special warrant to use a surveillance device to gather information about one crime, and you find information about a different crime. You can use this evidence in court, even if it is about a different crime than the one you were originally investigating.

If you find evidence of another crime while using a surveillance device, you can still use it in court. This is because the law says that the evidence is not automatically thrown out just because it was found while investigating a different crime. You can use the evidence as long as you could have gotten a warrant to investigate the new crime, or if you could have legally used a surveillance device to gather information about it.

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This page was last updated on 24 May 2025

View the original legislation for this page at https://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1986/0120/latest/link.aspx?id=DLM3330216.

Topics:

Crime and justice > Criminal lawCrime and justice > Police and safety

56: Carrying out authorised surveillance activities, or

"Doing surveillance when you have a special permit and following the rules"

58: Other provisions that apply to surveillance device warrants, or

"Rules that also apply when police use a surveillance device warrant"

Part 3Enforcement officers' powers and orders
Surveillance device warrants and declaratory orders: Carrying out authorised surveillance activities and evidential material relevant to other offences

57Admissibility of evidential material relevant to other offences

Subsection (2) applies if, in the course of carrying out activities authorised by a surveillance device warrant or while lawfully using a surveillance device in relation to an offence, a person obtains any evidential material in relation to an offence—
that is not the offence in respect of which the warrant was issued or in respect of which the surveillance device was lawfully put into use, as the case requires; but
in respect of which a surveillance device warrant could have been issued or a surveillance device could have been lawfully used.

The evidential material referred to in subsection (1) is not inadmissible in criminal proceedings by reason only that the surveillance device warrant that authorised the activity that obtained the material was issued in respect of a different offence or, as the case requires, that the material was obtained from the use of a surveillance device that was put into use in respect of a different offence.