scholarly journals Expert Evidence in Criminal Proceedings

2016 ◽  
Vol 80 (5) ◽  
pp. 344-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Stockdale ◽  
Adam Jackson

In its 2011 report Expert Evidence in Criminal Proceedings in England and Wales (Law Com No. 325), the Law Commission recommended that the admissibility of expert evidence in criminal proceedings should be governed by a new statutory regime comprising a new statutory reliability test in combination with codification and refinement of existing common law principles relating to ‘assistance’, ‘expertise’ and ‘impartiality’. The government declined to enact the Law Commission’s draft Bill due to a lack of certainty as to whether the additional costs incurred would be offset by savings. Instead the government invited the Criminal Procedure Rule Committee (CrimPRC) to consider amendments to the Criminal Procedure Rules (CrimPR) to introduce, as far as possible, the spirit of the Law Commission’s recommendations. The consequent amendments to CrimPR Part 33 (now CrimPR Part 19) in combination with the making of the new Practice Direction CrimPD 33A (now CrimPD 19A) by the Lord Chief Justice resulted in what he described in his 2014 Criminal Bar Association Kalisher Lecture as ‘a novel way of implementing an excellent Report’. This paper considers the possible evolution of the common law in light of these amendments, the challenges associated with adopting such a novel approach to reform and the potential opportunities for the improvement of expert evidence in criminal proceedings that the changes were intended to create.

2021 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 153-160
Author(s):  
Andrіy Shulha ◽  
◽  
Tetyana Khailova ◽  

The article deals with the problem of specialist’s participation in the scene examination, which is carried out before entering information into the Unified Register of the pre-trial investigations. The essence of the problem is that the current criminal procedural law of Ukraine recognizes the specialist’s participation only in the pre-trial investigation, the litigation and the proceedings in the case of the commission of an unlawful act under the law of Ukraine on criminal liability. Part 1 of Article 71 of the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine states that a specialist in criminal proceedings is a person who has special knowledge and skills and can provide advice and conclusions during the pre-trial investigation and trial on issues that require appropriate special knowledge and skills. In other cases, the specialist has no procedural status. In addition, Part 1 of Article 237 of the CPC of Ukraine «Examination» states that the examination is conducted to identify and record information on the circumstances of the offense commitment. It is an act provided by the law of Ukraine on criminal liability. However, there are the cases in the investigation, when a report is received, for example, about a person's death, other events with formal signs of the offense, which must first be checked for signs of a crime, and only then the act can be considered as offense. In this case, a specialist takes part in the scene examination. However, the current criminal procedure law in accordance with Part 1, Article 71 of the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine determines the legal status of a specialist only as the participant in criminal proceedings. The paragraph 10, part 1 of Article 3 of the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine defines the criminal proceedings as pre-trial investigation and court proceedings or procedural actions in the case of the commission of an unlawful act. Therefore, when the inspection of the scene is based on the uncertain status of the event (there is no clear information that the event contains signs of an offense), the specialist’s participation is not regulated by law. The authors propose to consider the specialists as «experienced persons» in cases mentioned above and to include their advices to the protocol of the scene examination, as the advices of other scene examination participants.


2020 ◽  
pp. 377-386
Author(s):  
Я. Ю. Конюшенко

The purpose of the article is to define the prosecutor's supervision over investigative (search) actions as a legal guarantee of human rights, as well as problematic issues in its implementation and to make proposals to improve the current criminal procedure legislation of Ukraine. The article defines doctrinal approaches to the concepts of "prosecutor's supervision over compliance with the law during the pre-trial investigation" and "prosecutor's procedural guidance of the pre-trial investigation" in the context of investigative (search) actions. The author came to the conclusion that the provisions of the Constitution of Ukraine, the Law of Ukraine "On the Prosecutor's Office" and the Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine in terms of regulating the functions and powers of the prosecutor during the pre-trial investigation. Based on the study, it is proposed to consider procedural guidance as one of the forms of prosecutor's supervision over the pre-trial investigation, which is implemented directly by the prosecutor or a group of prosecutors who are appointed to carry it out in a particular criminal proceeding. The author also emphasizes the existence of forms of supervision of the highest level prosecutor on the legality of these actions, which are implemented through the demand and study of information on the progress and results of pre-trial investigation, criminal proceedings and certified copies of court decisions and study of compliance with criminal procedure. A number of problematic issues during the prosecutor's supervision in pre-trial criminal proceedings are outlined, which relate to the relationship between the prosecutor's supervision and judicial control over the legality of investigative (search) actions; subjects and subject of supervision of the prosecutor in this sphere; providing the prosecutor-procedural manager and prosecutors of the highest level with instructions and instructions during the investigative (search) actions. To address these issues, it is proposed to amend the current criminal procedure legislation of Ukraine. The study of the materials of criminal proceedings and the survey of the subjects of criminal proceedings indicate the existence of a number of problematic issues that exist during the implementation of the prosecutor's procedural guidance of investigative (search) actions in the context of human rights.


2006 ◽  
Vol 78 (9) ◽  
pp. 546-578
Author(s):  
Slobodan Beljanski

The new Law on Criminal Procedure of the Republic of Serbia entered into force on June 10, 2006. It will apply starting from June 1, 2007 except for several provisions that have been effective ever since the Law entered into force. In this Article, the author has analyzed several new solutions from the first ten chapters of the Law from the logical, functional, historical and comparative point of view. The author concluded that the number of unacceptable and unnecessary solutions in this law seriously exceeded the number common for this kind of projects. It was hard to expect different result from the work which was done quickly and without critical reception with a noticeable intention of the authors to put their own original contribution to one, in fact, eclectic project. Since there is a lack of legal reasons, the author has outlined possible political intentions that might have been caused by the wish to show off with one more reformative project or from the intention to influence the criminal proceedings through the combination of the new type of investigation and current weakness of public prosecution. The line of new restrictive legal solutions, in which the goal is more dominant that the means to achieve the goal, and the measures to achieve the procedural discipline are more dominant than the care for rights brought the author to the conclusion that the reasons of palliative nature were the most crucial for some solutions and to the conclusion that since the justice was not able to get used to the application of good laws, the laws were simply adjusted to the bad justice.


Author(s):  
Ulyana Polyak

The current criminal procedure law of Ukraine stipulates that a witness is obliged to give a true testimony during pre-trial investigation and trial, however, the legislator made an exception for this by specifying the categories of persons who have been granted immunity from immunity, ie they are released by law. testify. The article deals with the problems of law and practice regarding the prohibition of the interrogation of a notary as a witness in criminal proceedings and the release of him from the obligation to keep the notarial secret by the person who entrusted him with the information which is the subject of this secret. The notion of notarial secrecy is proposed to be changed, since the subject of this secrecy is not only information that became known to the notary public from the interested person, but also those information that the notary received from other sources in the performance of their professional duties, as well as the procedural activity of the notary himself, is aimed at achieving a certain legal result. The proposal made in the legal literature to supplement the CPC of Ukraine with the provisions that a notary is subject to interrogation as a witness on information that constitutes a notarial secret, if the notarial acts were declared illegal in accordance with the procedure established by law The proposal to increase the list of persons who are not subject to interrogation as witnesses about the information constituting a notarial secret is substantiated, this clause is proposed to be supplemented by provisions that, apart from the notary, are not notarized, other notarials, notaries as well as the persons mentioned in Part 3 of Art. 8 of the Law of Ukraine "On Notary". Amendments to the current CPC of Ukraine by the amendments proposed in this publication will significantly improve the law prohibiting the interrogation of a notary as a witness in criminal proceedings, as well as improve certain theoretical provisions of the institute of witness immunity in criminal proceedings.


2010 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 74-81
Author(s):  
Frank Cranmer

The issue of assisted suicide has been a matter of considerable controversy. On 9 December 2008 the incoming Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC, announced that he would not prosecute Mark and Julie James for taking their son Daniel, paralysed as a result of a rugby accident, to an assisted-dying clinic in Switzerland. At the same time, Margo MacDonald MSP has been attempting to change the law in Scotland, where assisting the suicide of another is a common law offence. During the Lords committee stage of the Coroners and Justice Bill Lord Falconer moved a new clause to make it legal to help another to travel to a country in which assisted dying was lawful, in circumstances where that person had made a formal declaration of intent to travel abroad in order to die and two doctors, independent of each other, had certified that that person was terminally ill and had the necessary mental capacity to make the declaration. For the Government, Lord Bach said that Ministers felt that the Bill was not the appropriate vehicle for changing the law on assisted suicide and suggested that if Falconer wished to pursue the matter further he should do so through a Private Member's Bill – and the new clause was duly defeated by 194 votes to 141.


Author(s):  
Lorna Hutson

This chapter reexamines the older scholarly consensus that humanist rhetoric had no great effect on legal development in sixteenth-century England. It argues that the humanist emphasis on topical invention led to a blurring of distinctions between rhetoric and dialectic, and that key to both were artificial proofs derived from “circumstances,” “accidents,” and “predicaments.” It shows first how circumstances, employed in criminal procedure, helped develop the law of evidence and then goes on to show how this terminology was used to shape the “reasons” for decisions in highly significant civil cases such as Calvin’s Case (1608). If a major development of English common law in this period is its new emphasis on the reasoned decisions of courts as a source of law, this article proposes that it was topical invention that shaped the “reasons” and, hence, the law.


Author(s):  
Zhanna A. Nikolaeva

The author analyzes the content of interrelated tax norms, administrative and criminal laws, which constitute the concept of liability for tax offences. The analysis makes it possible to identify the elements that cause non-compliance with the foundations of legal liability in criminal proceedings: its inevitability, equality of everyone before the law and the court, justice. Representatives of small and medium- sized businesses are placed in unequal, discriminatory circumstances in comparison with large businesses. In addition, the legislation on taxes and fees contains provisions which create obstacles for the operation of criminal and criminal procedure laws. Many instances of tax evasion, the non-payment of fees and/or insurance fees in large and especially large amounts revealed by tax services do not become known to investigative bodies. In this case, the principle of the priority of sectoral legislation ceases to work, since in criminal proceedings the provisions of the Tax Code of the Russian Federation cancel out the effect of the norms which are common to all types of crimes and express the foundations of a particular sector of law. This paper substantiates the need to improve the concept of liability for violations of the legislation on taxes and fees.


Author(s):  
D.V. Tat'yanin

The law of criminal procedure contains a number of rules with different content, which raises a number of questions in their interpretation and application. Decisions made using rules with different content lead to their appeal, often to annulment, which does not ensure the achievement of the appointment of criminal proceedings, but leads to unjustified red tape in criminal proceedings and the delay in making final decisions on them. The need to harmonize criminal procedure rules is related to ensuring high-quality and effective criminal proceedings, ensuring the protection of the rights of participants in criminal proceedings, the quality of the evidence process, both in pre-trial and judicial proceedings. The article addresses the problems of unification of criminal procedure rules containing such concepts as an investigator and urgent investigative actions. It is proposed to eliminate the contradictions in them in order to ensure their uniform application. The introduction of a single concept of investigator and refusal to use the profession of "forensic investigator" in this concept is justified, it is proposed to expand the number of participants who have the right to carry out urgent investigative actions, as well as to assign to them investigative actions carried out at the stage of initiating a criminal case.


Yuridika ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 17
Author(s):  
Bastianto Nugroho

The trial of a criminal case is to find out whether a criminal offense has occurred in an event, therefore in the most important criminal proceedings the proceedings are proved. Evidence is a problem that plays a role in the examination process in court because with this proof is determined the fate of a defendant. The legal function in the State of Indonesia is to regulate the order of society in the life of the nation and the state, whereas the violation of the law itself is an event that must exist in every society and is impossible to be eliminated absolutely, because violation of law is an integral part of development More complex. One of the provisions governing how the law enforcement officers carry out the task in the field of repressive is the criminal procedure law which has the purpose of searching and approaching material truth, the complete truth of a criminal case by applying the provisions of criminal procedure law honestly darn precisely with The purpose of finding out who the perpetrator can be charged with is a violation of the law. 


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