PREPARATION OF A STATEMENT—INADMISSIBLE EVIDENCE

2007 ◽  
Vol 79 (9) ◽  
pp. 371-395
Author(s):  
Momčilo Grubač

This study includes certain number of decisions of the European Court of Human Rights that relate to the criminal procedural matters, primarily those constituting the right to a fair trial provided in Article 6 of the Convention for Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. These decisions were analyzed and interpreted in order to establish the practice of the Court in these procedural matters and to enable us to evaluate whether domestic criminal procedural law and its application are in line with this practice. The author dealt with the issues of prohibition to institute legal action twice for the same cause of action (ne bis in idem), immunities and privileges, right to court access, exclusion of inadmissible evidence from the criminal case files, right to the impartial court and right of defense to call and interrogate witnesses.


1981 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 453-463 ◽  
Author(s):  
William C. Thompson ◽  
Geoffrey T. Fong ◽  
D. L. Rosenhan

Author(s):  
Michael J. Saks ◽  
Barbara A. Spellman

The major source of information in a trial’s search for factual truth is the oral testimony of witnesses. The main worry about those witnesses is that they will be in error or will intentionally lie or mislead. Consequently, the law provides tools to help assess the veracity and accuracy of witnesses. However, the effects of some of those tools (e.g., oath) are unknown, and we know that people in general are bad at using certain other tools (e.g., demeanor cues in assessing veracity). Cross-examination often is praised as the law’s greatest method for getting at both veracity and accuracy, but surprisingly little psychology research exists on it. One worry about cross-examination is the same worry that psychologists have about leading questions: source confusion (jurors sometimes don’t remember which witness said what, and so don’t remember which testimony was discredited during cross-examination). Like the problem of disregarding inadmissible evidence, it can be difficult or impossible to erase what has already been learned. Historically, evidence law precluded people from testifying when the law assumed they would be likely to lie or make mistakes. The rules then opened the courtroom doors wider, allowing nearly everyone to testify, with the assumption that lawyers could expose or jurors could recognize when witnesses were lying. Interestingly, in the realm of privileges, which prevent some potential witnesses from testifying for various psychological and policy reasons, end up precluding many of the potential witnesses who would have the most incentive to lie on the witness stand.


Books Abroad ◽  
1966 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 91
Author(s):  
Stanley Weintraub ◽  
John Osborne

1995 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 600-619
Author(s):  
Michael Hirst

There is something peculiar, perverse and extravagant about the behaviour of the courts when confronted with drink-driving offences under the Road Traffic Act 1988. Drivers who have manifestly committed such offences all too often escape conviction, or have their convictions overturned on appeal, as a result of trivial, bona fide and otherwise inconsequential procedural errors supposedly made by the police when obtaining specimens of breath or blood for analysis.* This is peculiar, in that trivial or inconsequential procedural errors in the gathering of evidence do not ordinarily lead to acquittals in criminal cases. It is perverse, in that it largely ignores a major redrafting of the drink-driving law, which was specifically intended to prevent such unmeritorious acquittals; and it is extravagant, in that it wastes court time and public money, whilst generating an excessive amount of highly technical case law. Worst of all, it leads to glaring and absurd failures of justice, which can only drag the law into disrepute.


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