The prosecutor appealed by way of case stated from magistrates who had exercised their discretion to exclude evidence of possession of drugs that had been obtained by an illegal search of the accused’s room by the police.
Held: The magistrates had exercised their discretion wrongly in the particular case; but Lord Widgery C.J., while stressing that the occasions on which the discretion ought to be exercised in favour of excluding admissible evidence would be exceptional, nevertheless referred to it as applying to ‘all the evidence tendered by the prosecution’ and described its ambit in the widest terms: ‘If the case is such that not only have the police officers entered without authority but they have been guilty of trickery, or they have misled someone, or they have been oppressive, or they have been unfair, or in other respects they have behaved in a manner which is morally reprehensible, then it is open to the justices to apply their discretion and decline to allow the particular evidence to be let in as part of the trial’.
Judges:
Lord Widgery CJ
Citations:
[1977] 3 WLR 895
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Regina v Sang HL 25-Jul-1979
The defendant appealed against an unsuccessful application to exclude evidence where it was claimed there had been incitement by an agent provocateur.
Held: The appeal failed. There is no defence of entrapment in English law. All evidence . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Crime
Updated: 20 May 2022; Ref: scu.250467
