12. Identification evidence

Titles in the Core Text series take the reader straight to the heart of the subject, providing focused, concise, and reliable guides for students at all levels. A committee was set up in the mid-1970s under the chairmanship of Lord Devlin to report on identification evidence and identification procedures. Since publication of the Devlin Report both common law and statute have achieved much in reducing the risk of miscarriages of justice through mistaken identifications. This chapter discusses the following: the inherent unreliability of evidence of identification; the Court of Appeal’s decision in Turnbull; identification procedures and PACE Code D; and assorted methods of identification.

6. Character and credibility

Titles in the Core Text series take the reader straight to the heart of the subject, providing focused, concise, and reliable guides for students at all levels. This chapter discusses the following: issue and credit; the concept of ‘credibility’; bringing out the character of the parties and their witnesses; and evidence of the defendant’s good character. Evidence introduced to illuminate someone’s character is a fairly common feature in both civil and criminal trials. According to the context, however, it may fulfil different purposes. Notably, it may serve as a potential indicator of whether or not someone is likely to be a truthful witness.

4. The course of the trial

Titles in the Core Text series take the reader straight to the heart of the subject, providing focused, concise, and reliable guides for students at all levels. This chapter discusses the following: the right to begin; the role of the trial judge; the judge’s right to call a witness; examination-in-chief; hostile witnesses; cross-examination; re-examination; calling evidence relating to witnesses’ veracity; witness support; the Crown’s right to reopen its case; and special protections extended to various classes of witness in criminal cases. Many of the rules apply to civil and criminal proceedings alike. However, as elsewhere in this book, the accent will be on rules of criminal evidence.

5. Witnesses’ previous consistent statements and the remnants of the rule against narrative

Titles in the Core Text series take the reader straight to the heart of the subject, providing focused, concise, and reliable guides for students at all levels. This chapter discusses the following: the rule against narrative that excludes evidence of previous consistent statements; the five exceptions to the rule against narrative; evidence of distress; the eventual introduction of evidence-in-chief delivered by video recording (Criminal Justice Act 2003, s 137); statements made by the accused when first taxed with incriminating facts; and statements made by the accused when incriminating articles are recovered.

11. Drawing adverse inferences from a defendant’s omissions, lies, or false alibis

Titles in the Core Text series take the reader straight to the heart of the subject, providing focused, concise, and reliable guides for students at all levels. A suspect’s silence in response to questioning is liable to arouse suspicion: the normal reaction to an accusation, it is widely believed, is to volunteer a response. This chapter discusses the following: the so-called right to silence; permissible inferences drawn from the defendant’s silence at common law; the failures provisions of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994: permissible inferences drawn from the defendant’s failure to mention facts, failure to testify, failure or refusal to account for objects etc, or failure to account for presence; permissible inferences drawn from lies told by the defendant: Lucas directions; permissible inferences drawn from false alibis put forward by the defendant.

7. Evidence of the defendant’s bad character

Titles in the Core Text series take the reader straight to the heart of the subject, providing focused, concise, and reliable guides for students at all levels. Human behaviour tends to follow patterns. Those who have previously been convicted of crime, or who can be shown to have committed other offences or to have behaved disreputably, either have a tendency to reoffend or are more likely to commit offences than those without such attributes. A defendant’s previous bad character may also reflect on credibility. This chapter discusses the following: the problem of whether or not to admit evidence of a defendant’s misconduct on other occasions; the situations in which evidence of a defendant’s bad character may be admitted in criminal cases, and the purposes for which it may be admitted; and the admission of similar fact evidence in civil cases.

3. Witnesses: competence, compellability, and various privileges

Titles in the Core Text series take the reader straight to the heart of the subject, providing focused, concise, and reliable guides for students at all levels. This chapter discusses the following: the competence of witnesses in civil and criminal cases; the compellability of witnesses, and of the accused and the spouse or civil partner in criminal cases in particular; sworn and unsworn evidence; privileges enjoyed by certain categories of witness, focussing upon the privilege against self-incrimination, and legal professional privilege (in the form of both legal advice privilege and litigation privilege); and public interest immunity.

8. The opinion rule and the presentation of expert evidence

Titles in the Core Text series take the reader straight to the heart of the subject, providing focused, concise, and reliable guides for students at all levels. The ‘opinion rule’ is one of the major exclusionary rules of the law of evidence. This chapter discusses the following: the general rule excluding evidence of opinion; four exceptions to the opinion rule born of necessity; the principal exception to the opinion rule: expert opinion; the presentation of DNA evidence; and the use of the Bayes’ theorem and instructing the jury in mathematical probabilities.

2. Presumptions and the burden of proof

Titles in the Core Text series take the reader straight to the heart of the subject, providing focused, concise, and reliable guides for students at all levels. This chapter discusses the following: criminal and civil burdens of proof; the ‘legal burden of proof’ and the ‘evidential burden’; the ‘tactical burden’; the prosecution’s legal burden of proof in criminal cases; when the defendant in a criminal case bears the legal burden of proof; the standard of proof; the evidential burden; the judge’s ‘invisible burden’; the burden of proof when establishing the admissibility of evidence; presumptions and the incidence of the burden of proof; and reversal of the burden of proof and the European Convention on Human Rights.

1. Relevance and admissibility of evidence

Titles in the Core Text series take the reader straight to the heart of the subject, providing focused, concise, and reliable guides for students at all levels. The law of evidence regulates what evidence may be admitted at trial and under what conditions such admissible proofs are to be admitted. This chapter discusses the following: the respective functions of judge and jury; the concept of relevance; the so-called ‘best evidence principle’; matters of which proof is unnecessary; judicial findings as evidence; prejudicial evidence, unfairly obtained evidence, and suspect witnesses; and evidence excluded as a matter of public policy.