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28: Sentence or process without jurisdiction
or “Legal protection for people carrying out sentences or warrants, even if the court or person giving the order made a mistake”
You could also call this:

“Explains when someone can be protected from punishment for following a faulty legal document”

If you’re carrying out an order or following a legal document that has a clear mistake in it, you can still be protected from getting in trouble. This protection applies as long as you truly believed the order or document was correct and you weren’t careless about it. Not knowing the law can actually be an excuse in this case.

Whether you were careless or not in believing the order or document was correct is a question that lawyers and judges will decide. They’ll look at the facts of what happened to make this decision.

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Next up: 30: Arresting the wrong person

or “This law protects people who accidentally arrest the wrong person when they thought they had the right one.”
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Part 3 Matters of justification or excuse
Sentence or process

29Irregular warrant or process

  1. Every one acting under a warrant or process that is bad in law on account of some defect in substance or in form, apparent on the face of it, shall be protected from criminal responsibility to the same extent and subject to the same provisions as if the warrant or process were good in law if in good faith and without culpable ignorance or negligence he or she believed that the warrant or process was good in law; and ignorance of the law shall in this case be an excuse.

  2. It is a question of law whether the facts of which there is evidence do or do not constitute culpable ignorance or negligence in his or her so believing the warrant or process to be good in law.

Compare
  • 1908 No 32 s 50