ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION Character evidence is relevant mainly in criminal trials. Before the Criminal Justice Act (CJA) 2003, the common law recognised two ways in which such evidence could be relevant. It could be relevant to any witness’s credibility, and it could also be relevant to the likelihood of a defendant’s guilt. Whether an item of character evidence was relevant to one or both of these matters depended on the circumstances. Broadly speaking, evidence of a defendant’s good character was relevant to both matters, and under Vye (1993) a direction to this effect became compulsory. The question whether a good character direction should be given or not, or given only in a qualified way, can arise either where the defendant has one or more previous convictions that can be regarded as not amounting to serious criminal behaviour, or where he has no convictions, but his evidence at trial discloses some criminal behaviour, though not that alleged by the prosecution. Students should note particularly the decisions in Gray (2004), Goss (2005), Teeluck and John (2005) and Payton (2006). Evidence of bad character was primarily relevant to guilt, where the prosecution was allowed to introduce it as part of its case against a defendant under the rules relating to similar fact evidence. Where such evidence was admitted only because of the way in which the defence was conducted, under rules contained in the Criminal Evidence Act 1898, it was generally meant to be relevant only to credibility. This distinction was not always easy to maintain in practice, and the CJA 2003 does not preserve it. In former editions of this book it was easy to deal with these topics separately, because the sources of law for each were quite distinct. This is no longer the case, as the law relating to evidence of bad character is now governed by the provisions of Part 11, Chapter 1 of the CJA 2003. To some extent, therefore, there is overlapping of the subject matter of Chapters 8 and 9 in this book, although the emphasis in Chapter 8 is on what used to be called similar fact evidence, and the emphasis in Chapter 9 is on evidence of bad character that becomes admissible by virtue of the way in which the defence is conducted. What is said here should be treated as an introduction to both chapters.