Investigating Impropriety in Jury Deliberations: A Recipe for Disaster?

2004 ◽  
Vol 68 (5) ◽  
pp. 411-422
Author(s):  
Nicola Haralambous
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Recent Case ◽  
Moral Integrity ◽  
Jury Deliberations ◽  
Justice Process ◽  
Criminal Justice Process ◽  
The Common

In light of recent case law, this article explores the principles underlying the common law prohibition against investigating into jury deliberations. It considers the effect of judicial refusal to inquire into genuine and serious allegations of impropriety in the jury room and examines the effect of the Contempt of Court Act 1981, s. 8. It proposes that the restrictive secrecy laws be qualified in order to safeguard against miscarriages of justice and to preserve the moral integrity of the criminal justice process.

International and Comparative Legal Perspectives on Victim Participation in Criminal Justice

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie Manikis
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Legal Process ◽  
Legal Traditions ◽  
Criminal Justice Systems ◽  
Justice Process ◽  
Criminal Justice Process ◽  
The Common ◽  
Victim Participation ◽  
Historical Developments

Victim participation in common law has evolved across history and jurisdictions. Historical developments within conceptions of crime, harms, and victims in common law as well as the different victims’ movements provide an understanding of the ways that victim participation has been shaped in more-recent common law criminal justice systems. Victim participation in the criminal legal process has also given rise to various debates, which suggests that providing active forms of engagement to victims remains controversial. The forms of victim participation are also diverse, and the literature has provided typologies of victim participation. Forms of participation also vary across jurisdictions and the different stages of the criminal justice process, including prosecutorial decisions, pretrial and trial proceedings, sentencing, parole, and clemency. Finally, research that focuses on victim participation in legal traditions beyond the common law would provide an additional and important contribution to the field.

scholarly journals The Admissibility of Young People's Statements under the Proposed Youth Criminal Justice Act

1969 ◽  
pp. 771
Author(s):  
Sanjeev Anand ◽  
James Robb
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Young People ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Young Offender ◽  
Youth Court ◽  
Youth Criminal Justice Act ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Young Offenders Act

This article examines the impact of Bill C-7, the Youth Criminal Justice Act, on the admissibility of young people s statements. Although the proposed reforms appear to leave admissibility within the discretion of youth court judges, the authors argue that the YCJA significantly curtails the types of factors that judges can consider when assessing the admissibility of youth statements. The three sources of law applicable to young offender statements are examined: the legislative provisions, the common law rules of voluntariness, and ss. 7, 9, and 10 of the Charter. The authors analyze s. 146 of the YCJA, the applicable section to youth statements, and compare it to the previous version of the Bill and to the current provisions of the Young Offenders Act The case law concerning voluntariness and Charter rights are also discussed, as well as the potential interrelationship between the three sources of law. In addition, the article explores when youth statements made to a person not in authority will be inadmissible.

Navigating through the effects of ‘Cracked Trials’

2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 136-149
Author(s):  
Kevin Kwok-yin Cheng
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Adverse Effects ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Criminal Procedure ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Sliding Scale ◽  
Justice Process ◽  
Criminal Justice Process

‘Cracked trials’ have been identified as a major problem in the criminal justice process, causing wastage of resources and time for all parties involved. The sliding scale of sentence discounts was implemented in England and Wales to tackle the problem of ‘cracked trials’ through providing the greatest amount of sentence reduction for earlier guilty pleas and thereby discouraging defendants from entering late guilty pleas. The sliding scale has been recently implemented or is being considered by other common law jurisdictions. This article examines how legal practitioners in Hong Kong have navigated around the adverse effects of cracked trials prior to the implementation of the sliding scale and argues how the sliding scale of sentence discounts is problematic. The findings offer insights regarding strategies and reforms on other aspects of the criminal procedure in responding to late guilty pleas.

scholarly journals Eliciting Best Evidence from a Child Witness: A Comparative Study of the United Kingdom and India

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Charanjit Singh
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Child Witness ◽  
Criminal Offence ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Justice Process ◽  
Criminal Justice Process

Abstract The successful prosecution of any criminal offence relies on evidence that proves its commission. Although the admissibility of evidence is key at first instance, the weight attached to a piece of evidence i.e. how “reliable” or “persuasive” it is will tilt the scale of justice in one or another direction. The problems with various forms of evidence i.e. that elicited from an eye or ear-witness has been thoroughly explored by academics and lawyers alike. Those same problems are potentially exacerbated where the witness is a child who has not only witnessed a gruesome crime but is required to give evidence in a forum (court) that is accompanied by intimidating surroundings. Whilst witness evidence, regardless of whether it is given by an adult or child, is a factual part of criminal justice, it is salient to note that the entire process has been made more witness-friendly in some commonwealth jurisdictions. This article explores the differences in the rules designed on eliciting best evidence from a child witness in the United Kingdom and India. In so doing, the case law from each jurisdiction is contrasted. There are two aims of the article, the first is to facilitate a conversation where one criminal justice system may learn from another’s experience. The second, a result of the first, is to make suggestions on improving the experience of a child witness in the Indian Criminal Justice Process.

Foreign Judgments and Contracts: The Anti-enforcement Injunction

2021 ◽  
pp. 251-272
Author(s):  
Tiong Min Yeo
Keyword(s):  
Common Law ◽  
Case Law ◽  
Recent Case ◽  
Breach Of Contract ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
The Common ◽  
Foreign Judgment

This essay examines, within the common law world, the practice of courts in England and Wales and in Singapore of granting injunctions to restrain the enforcement of foreign judgments, with particular reference to cases in which the injunction is sought to protect a contractual right. It considers the approach in recent case law, contrasting the ‘anti-enforcement injunction’ with the more frequently granted ‘anti-suit injunction’. It further seeks to differentiate cases where the proceedings leading to the foreign judgment had been brought in breach of a choice of court or arbitration agreement from cases where the reliance on the foreign judgment is the breach of contract.

The Agreement of Uncontroversial Evidence and the Presumption of Innocence: An Insoluble Dilemma?

2002 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Duff
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Trial ◽  
Presumption Of Innocence ◽  
Justice Process ◽  
Criminal Justice Process ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Relationship

On 1 April 1996, a rather odd provision was introduced into the Scottish criminal justice process, namely a duty on both prosecution and defence to try to agree uncontroversial evidence in advance of criminal trial.1 As far as the writer is aware, such a provision is unique, although the philosophy underlying its introduction is not totally alien to inquisitorial systems of criminal justice.2 What is particularly peculiar about this duty is that there is no sanction for a failure, however unreasonable, to agree uncontroversial evidence.3 The lack of a sanction resulted from a concern that the creation of any penalty would impinge unjustifiably upon the rights of the accused. The intention in this article is to explore in detail the relationship between the duty to agree uncontroversial evidence and the position of the accused, and to suggest that the imposition of a sanction for a breach of this duty is not as problematic as was thought by those responsible for the legislation.

scholarly journals Thabo Meli Revisited: The Pernicious Effects of Result-Driven Decisions

2013 ◽  
Vol 77 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-55
Author(s):  
Kenneth J. Arenson
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Limited Extent ◽  
Natural Consequence ◽  
Privy Council ◽  
The Public ◽  
Adversarial System ◽  
The Common

Despite the hackneyed expression that ‘judges should interpret the law and not make it’, the fact remains that there is some scope within the separation of powers doctrine for the courts to develop the common law incrementally. To this extent, the courts can effectively legislate, but only to this limited extent if they are to respect the separation of powers doctrine. On occasion, however, the courts have usurped the power entrusted to Parliament, and particularly so in instances where a strict application of the existing law would lead to results that offend their personal notions of what is fair and just. When this occurs, the natural consequence is that lawyers, academics and the public in general lose respect for both the judges involved as well as the adversarial system of criminal justice. In order to illustrate this point, attention will focus on the case of Thabo Meli v United Kingdom in which the Privy Council, mistakenly believing that it could not reach its desired outcome through a strict application of the common law rule of temporal coincidence, emasculated the rule beyond recognition in order to convict the accused. Moreover, the discussion to follow will demonstrate that not only was the court wrong in its belief that the case involved the doctrine of temporal coincidence, but the same result would have been achieved had the Council correctly identified the issue as one of legal causation and correctly applied the principles relating thereto.

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