Evidence, proof and justice

Evidence, Proof and Justice Legal Philosophy and the Provable in English Courts Solomon E Salako Download free books at Solomon E Salako Evidence, Proof and Justice Legal Philosophy and the Provable in English Courts Download free eBooks at bookboon.com Evidence, Proof and Justice: Legal Philosophy and the Provable in English Courts 1st edition © 2010 Solomon E Salako & bookboon.com ISBN 978-87-7681-685-8 Download free eBooks at bookboon.com Deloitte & Touche LLP and affiliated entities Evidence, Proof and Justice: Legal Philosophy and the Provable in English Courts Contents Contents Preface 1 Introduction 1.1 Demosthenes, Cicero and the rationalist tradition 1.2 Theories of evidence 11 1.3 Legal philosophy and the rationalist tradition 12 1.4 Guide to readers 17 2 The presumption of innocence and adverse inferences from silence 19 2.1 Introduction 19 360° thinking 2.2 The presumption of innocence: the marcescent Woolmington principle 20 2.3 Adverse inferences from silence 26 2.4 European Convention Jurisprudence and Commonwealth Paradigms Re-Examined 360° thinking 29 360° thinking Discover the truth at www.deloitte.ca/careers © Deloitte & Touche LLP and affiliated entities Discover the truth at www.deloitte.ca/careers Download free eBooks at bookboon.com © Deloitte & Touche LLP and affiliated entities Discover the truth at www.deloitte.ca/careers Click on the ad to read more © Deloitte & Touche LLP and affiliated entities Dis Evidence, Proof and Justice: Legal Philosophy and the Provable in English Courts Contents 3 Protecting vulnerable witnesses: summum ius summa iniuria 34 3.1 Introduction 34 3.2 35 The principle of orality 3.3 False-memory 40 3.4 Sexual History Evidence or the slagging-off of the complainant in rape cases 42 3.5 Special Measures and Judicial Discretion 46 3.6 Summary and Conclusion 47 4 Double jeopardy and similar fact evidence 48 4.1 Introduction 48 4.2 The extent to which double jeopardy protects an accused from further proceedings based on same factual situation 49 4.3 The impact of the CJA 2003 on the Principle of Double Jeopardy and Similar Fact Rule 53 4.4 Double Jeopardy and Reopening of Final Acquittals 55 4.5 Summary and Conclusion 58 5 Identification evidence: old problems, new solutions 60 5.1 Introduction 60 5.2 Causes Célèbres and the Turner rule 62 Increase your impact with MSM Executive Education For almost 60 years Maastricht School of Management has been enhancing the management capacity of professionals and organizations around the world through state-of-the-art management education Our broad range of Open Enrollment Executive Programs offers you a unique interactive, stimulating and multicultural learning experience Be prepared for tomorrow’s management challenges and apply today For more information, visit www.msm.nl or contact us at +31 43 38 70 808 or via admissions@msm.nl For more information, visit www.msm.nl or contact us at +31 43 38 70 808 the globally networked management school or via admissions@msm.nl Executive Education-170x115-B2.indd Download free eBooks at bookboon.com 18-08-11 15:13 Click on the ad to read more Evidence, Proof and Justice: Legal Philosophy and the Provable in English Courts Contents 5.3 Failure of courts to prescribe rigorous rules for scrutinizing scientific opinion evidence 63 5.4 Conclusion 65 6 Public interest immunity, privilege and liberty rights: Hohfeld’s analysis re-examined 67 6.1 Introduction 67 6.2 69 Theories of unimpeded access to justice 6.3 Conclusion 71 7 Expert evidence and mathematical proof 73 7.1 Introduction 73 7.2 The Pascal/Bayes School of Probability and Uncertainty 74 7.3 The Bacon/Mill/Cohen School of Inductive Probability 77 7.4 The Shafer/Dempster School of Non-additive Beliefs 79 7.5 The Zadeh School of Fuzzy Probability and Inference 79 7.6 The Scandinavian School of Evidentiary Value 79 7.7 Conclusion 80 GOT-THE-ENERGY-TO-LEAD.COM We believe that energy suppliers should be renewable, too We are therefore looking for enthusiastic new colleagues with plenty of ideas who want to join RWE in changing the world Visit us online to find out what we are offering and how we are working together to ensure the energy of the future Download free eBooks at bookboon.com Click on the ad to read more Evidence, Proof and Justice: Legal Philosophy and the Provable in English Courts Contents Epilogue: the future 81 8.1 What is wrong with the English adversarial system of justice? 81 8.2 Free proof and the adversarial system of justice: the final words 85 List of Abbreviations 86 Endnotes 91 With us you can shape the future Every single day For more information go to: www.eon-career.com Your energy shapes the future Download free eBooks at bookboon.com Click on the ad to read more Evidence, Proof and Justice: Legal Philosophy and the Provable in English Courts Preface Preface A lot has happened in the last decade on rationalising the congeries of rules of evidence applied in English courts Scientific evidence is gradually replacing evidence based on the principle of orality or spontaneity And yet, judges are not scientifically trained There is a convergence of the English adversarial system, especially in criminal proceedings, with the Continental inquisitorial system; and, what is more, the proliferation of statutes on the law of evidence and the wide discretionary powers vested in judges to admit all types of evidence raise serious issues of justice and ‘open impartiality’ as distinct from ‘close impartiality’ It is the object of this book to use legal philosophy to analyse the transformation of the rules of evidence in English courts with a view to teasing out the benefits and portents of the transformation and proffering suggestions for reform I seize this opportunity to thank Ms Karin Hamilton Jakobsen and the editorial staff of Ventus Publishing, Denmark, for their cooperation Many thanks to Ms Sue Wiseman for using her immense wordprocessing skills to type the manuscript within a short space of time The book is dedicated to Diane Solomon E Salako Liverpool, United Kingdom July 2010 Download free eBooks at bookboon.com Evidence, Proof and Justice: Legal Philosophy and the Provable in English Courts Introduction 1 Introduction 1.1 Demosthenes, Cicero and the rationalist tradition The intellectual history of the law of evidence, according to Professor W Twining, “reaches back to classical rhetoric and has fascinating ramifications for the philosophy of knowledge, debates about proof of the existence of God, the emergence of theories of probability and the development of modern psychology, forensic science and several other fields”.1 This reflection on the entelechy or constituent atoms of the law of evidence – i.e rhetoric, legal philosophy, epistemology, religion, mathematics, psychology and legal ideology – must be appraised in any critical study of the adversarial system of justice in English courts Such an appraisal must not only evaluate how the “oughts” of today have been conditioned in the past but also highlight the gap between the law in books and the living law, the role of legal ideology in the transformation of the English law of evidence and discuss the theories of adjudication Historically, the Anglo-American rationalist tradition of evidence scholarship is traceable to rhetoric – the theory and practice of persuasion – which, according to prosographical sources2, was initiated in the fifth century BC Views differed as to who the founder of rhetoric was The view that Empedocles was the founder has been ascribed to Aristotle while Cicero in De oratore3 regarded Corax and Tisias as the inventors and founders of the art Who the real founder was need not detain us here What is important is the legal importance of rhetoric: the fact that both civil and criminal trials in English courts are dominated by it As for classification, technical handbooks on rhetoric are divided into three main genres: (i) forensic (i.e speeches of defence or accusation before law courts); (ii) deliberative (political advice to legislative or executive body); and (iii) demonstrative or epideictic (speeches in praise or blame)4 Of these three genres, forensic rhetoric is the most important to the English adversarial system of justice even though the deliberative and epideictic genres are often pressed into service Forensic rhetoric, as it is practised in English courts today, was initiated by Demosthenes (384–322 BC) a vigorous opponent of Philip of Macedonia – eulogized by Cicero as “the most famous of the Greek orators.”5 But to Cicero we owe the development of the forensic skills of advocacy Cicero’s main thesis in De oratore is that the orator needs philosophical knowledge and that the earliest system devised by the Sophists in the fifth century BC prescribed the division of a speech into five parts: (i) prologue – attracting the attention of the audience, making the audience well-disposed, attentive and receptive; (ii) narration – an account of what (allegedly) happened in a nutshell; (iii) division or an announcement of the themes or points one intends to address; (iv) argumentation or the proof of one’s points and the refutation of the points of one’s adversary; and (v) the epilogue – the summing-up and the arousal of the emotions of the jury or audience6 (For Cicero, the adumbrated parts of speech became the traditional focus of judicial rhetoric.) Download free eBooks at bookboon.com Evidence, Proof and Justice: Legal Philosophy and the Provable in English Courts Introduction Of this quintuplet, argumentation or the lawyer’s story – whether as an advocate trying to persuade a tribunal to decide in favour of his client or the judge as an orator grappling with the principles of law applicable in the instant case – bristles with jurisprudential problems The argumentation of an advocate is often presented in narrative form: a story presenting the disputed facts as he (the advocate) finds them and supporting a particular theory which he wants the judge or jury to accept The argumentation, and not the law, determines the case as illustrated by Cicero’s exploits as a young advocate in 80 BC In his defence of Roscius from Ameria (Pro Roscio Amerina)7, Cicero delivered a speech soundly based on meticulous research but its dramatic effect derived from its structure and not from evidence Roscius was accused of having murdered his father Parricide at this period carried a death penalty under Roman law Cicero knew that the father and son had been on poor terms and that Roscius was framed for parricide In the course of his research, Cicero found that Roscius’s father, a well-to-do farmer in Ameria, a hill town north of Rome (now Amelia) had paid a visit to Rome during the previous summer or autumn He found that a long-standing feud existed between Roscius’s father and two fellow Amerians and the former was set upon and killed near some public baths on his way back from a dinner According to Cicero, one of the pair of fellow-Amerians happened to be in Rome and immediately sent a message to the other with the news of Roscius’s death Cicero also found that this was a trumped up charge to prevent Roscius from reclaiming his father’s estate (valued at 6,000,000 sestertia) which had been confiscated retrospectively under the Proscription and auctioned for a trifling 2,000 sestertia Cicero opened his defence with a refutation of parricide and went on to destroy the character of the two Amerians and pin the murder on them He also launched a frontal assault on the Dictator of Rome’s favourite, Chrysogonus, highlighting the un-Roman excesses of his life-style and describing him as the real villain The court burst into loud applause and Roscius was acquitted Again, in his defence of Cluentius (Pro Cluentio)8, who was accused of poisoning his step-father, Oppianicus in 66 BC, Cicero concentrated on a series of trials eight years earlier when the defendant had successfully prosecuted Oppianicus for attempting to murder him Public opinion was on Oppianicus’s side but Cicero took the jury through Oppianicus’s bizarre career: how he had systematically killed members of his own family or other families into which he had married Cicero took no interest in simplifying the narrative and conceded that in the interest of his client he had “wrapped the jury in darkness” That judicial rhetoric determines the outcome of cases, now as then, is chronicled by Professor W Twining In his review of the extensive literature on R v Bywaters and Thompson9, Twining found that the decision in the murder trial depended on “competing [four] general hypotheses or theories within which all relevant evidence can be organized and weighed” which the trier of fact was prepared to accept in an adversarial system of criminal justice And yet, rhetoric has been ignored in Anglo-American theories of evidence To these theories we now turn Download free eBooks at bookboon.com 10 ...Solomon E Salako Evidence, Proof and Justice Legal Philosophy and the Provable in English Courts Download free eBooks at bookboon.com Evidence, Proof and Justice: Legal Philosophy and the Provable... Touche LLP and affiliated entities Evidence, Proof and Justice: Legal Philosophy and the Provable in English Courts Contents Contents Preface 1 Introduction 1.1 Demosthenes, Cicero and the rationalist... amended)34; and (iv) the similar fact rule which is both an inclusionary and exclusionary rule35 Download free eBooks at bookboon.com 12 Evidence, Proof and Justice: Legal Philosophy and the Provable