The Board was asked whether sworn depositions of two deceased witnesses should have been admitted.
Held: A warning should be given when admitting identification involving communications between spouses. A conviction based on uncorroborated evidence should be sustained in absence of a warning of the danger of a mistaken identification only in most exceptional circumstances.
Lord Griffiths said: ‘if convictions are to be allowed upon uncorroborated identification evidence there must be a strict insistence upon a judge giving a clear warning of the danger of a mistaken identification which the jury must consider before arriving at their verdict and that it would only be in the most exceptional circumstances that a conviction based on uncorrroborated identification evidence should be sustained in the absence of such a warning.’
and ‘The mere fact that the deponent will not be available for cross-examination is obviously an insufficient ground for excluding the deposition for that is a feature common to the admission of all depositions which must have been contemplated and accepted by the legislature when it gave statutory sanction to their admission in evidence. . . It will of course be necessary in every case to warn the jury that they have not had the benefit of hearing the evidence of the deponent tested in cross-examination and to take that into consideration when considering how far they can safely rely on the evidence in the deposition. No doubt in many cases it will be appropriate for a judge to develop this warning by pointing out particular features of the evidence in the deposition which conflict with other evidence and which could have been explored in cross-examination: but no rules can usefully be laid down to control the detail to which a judge should descend in the individual case’
Judges:
Lord Griffiths
Citations:
[1989] AC 1242, [1989] 2 All ER 305, (1989) 89 Cr App R 153, [1989] 2 WLR 924
Cited by:
Cited – Delroy Ricketts v The Queen PC 15-Dec-1997
(Jamaica) Special leave was granted to the defendant to appeal his conviction for murder. Counsel had been late for his trial, and the jury empanelled. When counsel arrived he said the defendant had not understood the judge. A trial took place as to . .
Cited – Beeres v Crown Prosecution Service (West Midlands) Admn 13-Feb-2014
The defendant said that his confession should not have been admitted in evidence it having been given when he had not been advised of his rights whilst at the police station because of his inebriation.
Held: The appeal failed. A confession is, . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Criminal Practice
Updated: 17 May 2022; Ref: scu.242118