ABSTRACT
Politicians and lawyers have generally turned a blind eye to these fundamental defects. Attempts to make verdicts a little more reliable have been made only erratically and on a piecemeal basis. This chapter deals with attempts that have been made to control the way in which juries think about evidence which at various times has been thought to be particularly unreliable. These gave rise to law which compelled judges to warn juries in a particular way when they had to consider certain types of evidence, or evidence from certain types of witness. Mandatory warnings to the jury In the 18th century, when the beginnings of our modern law of evidence can be perceived, both prosecution and defence were often unrepresented by counsel, and the judge played a much larger part in criminal cases than he did in the 19th century and later. In particular, judges had a greater control over juries’ deliberations. Summings up could contain much more of the judge’s opinion than would now be thought proper. Where it appeared that a deliberation was likely to be short, the jury would often not leave the jury box, and this could provide an opportunity for informal dialogue with the judge about the evidence. Even if a jury returned a verdict with which the judge disagreed, he could persuade them to reconsider.
