Sourcebook on Evidence

In this chapter I shall deal with two matters that seem to me to be fundamental in any study of the law of evidence. First, I shall try to say something about the nature of the subject matter. This is not as obvious as is sometimes assumed. The concept of evidence is an ambiguous one, and this has to be appreciated in

This was an action for goods sold and delivered, tried, before Williams J at the last assizes for the county of Sussex, when it appeared that the plaintiff was the agent for the Sussex Farming Society, and attended markets for the purpose of selling a new kind of guano, called ‘Rival Guano’, and that the defendant, a farmer residing at Lindfield, in that county, had purchased a quantity of it, for

THE BURDEN OF PROOF IN CIVIL CASES Questions about the legal burden of proof, and about the standard of proof that has to be reached by the person on whom the legal burden lies, do not arise in relation to cases as a whole, although in criminal cases this fact can be obscured

Inability to testify has always been regarded as the exception rather than the rule. When the modern law of evidence was beginning to develop in the 18th century the exception was a wide one whose rationale was probably twofold: a desire to keep people away from a situation where they might be tempted to

The appellant was convicted of housebreaking and larceny. A Mrs Harrison’s bungalow had been broken into and a safe and its contents were stolen. The safe was later found dumped in a pond with the back ripped open. Among the prosecution’s witnesses was a man named Swan.

The rule against hearsay has been stated as follows: ‘An assertion other than one made by a person while giving oral evidence in the proceedings is inadmissible as evidence of any fact asserted.’ This statement, originally in Cross

The rule against receiving hearsay evidence may be inapplicable for several reasons. evidence.

These will generally be the spontaneous exclamations of the victim of an offence or of an observer. (1987, House of Lords) The accused was charged with aggravated burglary and murder. The case for the Crown was that he, with an accomplice named O’Neill, had attacked a man

Two brothers were tried for the murder of a woman named Harriet Lane. Evidence was available from the person who had last seen Harriet Lane on the afternoon of 11 September 1874, when the deceased had left her lodgings. After that date Harriet Lane was not seen alive again, and that was the date alleged by the prosecution to be the date of the murder. The witness was ready to say

All evidence, without exception, is hazardous. There are several reasons for this. The first is that all evidence emerges as a result of some sort of selection. One kind may be loosely described as ‘natural selection’. Not all the evidence that is relevant to a particular inquiry will have survived. Witnesses may have

In 1981 the Attorney General issued guidelines to improve the existing practice of disclosure by the Crown. But these guidelines do not have the force of law. The law of disclosure is that laid down by the judge, in decided cases, and today the guidelines fail to reflect the law in a number of important respects. Their value as a set of instructions to prosecutors has thus largely been eroded by

In 1981 the Attorney General issued guidelines which covered amongst other subjects, the prosecution’s duty to disclose unused material to the defence. This covered, for example, all witness statements and documents not included in the committal bundles served on the defence and the unedited versions of any edited statements included in the committal bundles. The status of the

One of the most important of defence counsel’s objectives at trial is to ensure that as little of the prosecution evidence as possible reaches the jury – unless, of course, it happens to favour the defendant. We have already seen several ways

In this case the court had to consider the admissibility of a number of tape- recorded interviews between customs officers and the accused. The question arose whether what was said in the interviews amounted to confessions at all.

The accused and a co-accused had been stopped in a motor car by police who had noticed that the car had a defective rear light and that the occupants were not wearing seat-belts. The police then saw a quantity of goods in the car. A conversation took place between one of the officers and the accused, as a result of which the officers came to suspect that the goods had been stolen. The

In this case the court considered the position where one accused person makes an out-of-court statement which implicates a co-accused.

The accused was convicted of arson, the case for the prosecution being that he had set fire to a car belonging to his former girlfriend’s father. He made a confession, but its admissibility was challenged because of the way in which it had been obtained.

Similar fact evidence has a reputation for being an impenetrable subject. Quite often students who have coped well with other parts of an evidence course reach the examination still feeling that they don’t know what it’s about or how it works. They are aware of a few slogans – ‘striking similarity’, ‘positive

Applicant was convicted at the Warwick Assizes on 12 March 1923 before Bailhache J, of shopbreaking, and sentenced to 21 months’ imprisonment with hard labour.

Most problems in this area concern cross-examination under the Criminal Evidence Act 1898. But sometimes the defence may wish to give evidence of the accused’s good character in order to establish the improbability of his having committed the offence with which he is charged. It is not always appreciated

The relation between provisos (e) and (f) is a stock topic for essay questions in examinations. Candidates should be familiar with the discussion (obiter) of this question by the House of Lords in Jones v DPP (1961) and by Lord Lane CJ (arguably as part of the ratio) in Anderson (1988). Note should also be taken of

The appellant, Jottai Cokar, a native of West Africa and a man of poor intelligence, was charged at County of London Sessions on 9 February 1960 with entering the dwelling-house of one James Ballantyne by night on 14 January 1960 with intent to steal. The evidence was that at about midnight on 14 January he climbed through

There are three golden rules which, if followed faithfully, will ensure that you understand this part of evidence law. The first rule is that you should leave your books and go into a court. The second is that, once you are there, you should watch and listen carefully. The third rule is that you should repeat this

(1828, Court of King’s Bench)

In the course of this appeal the court had to consider the extent to which police officers in one trial could be cross-examined about other cases in which they or their colleagues had been involved. The defence at trial had been that alleged admissions by Edwards had been concocted by the police, who were members of the West Midlands Serious Crime Squad.

(1990, Court of Appeal)

The sources in this chapter cover three main problems. First, when is opinion evidence admissible? The second problem arises when it has been decided that opinion evidence is, in principle, admissible. At that stage it is necessary to examine the basis on which the opinion has been reached because this, too, may

PRIVILEGE In this section I have concentrated on those topics where the subject of privilege is most likely to arise: legal professional privilege and the privilege attaching to ‘without prejudice’ correspondence. The cases frequently cover several aspects