(Jamaica) The case for the defence was that the identification witnesses were deliberately lying and it was not suggested that they were mistaken, so that the sole line of defence was fabrication. The identification evidence was exceptionally good and the court applied the test in Domican v R, that the jury acting reasonably and properly would have returned the same verdict had the judge given them the appropriate Turnbull warning and explanation and that no miscarriage of justice had occurred.
Held: A Turnbull identification direction can be briefer if it was an attack on credibility. Lord Slynn said: ‘no precise form of words need be used so long as the essential elements of the warning are given to the jury’, and ‘the cases in which the warning can be entirely dispensed with must be wholly exceptional, even where credibility is the sole line of defence. In the latter type of case the judge should normally, and even in the exceptional case would be wise to tell the jury in an appropriate form to consider whether they are satisfied that the witness was not mistaken in view of the danger of the mistake referred to in R v Turnbull [1977] Q.B. 224.’
Lord Slynn
Times 29-Nov-1995, [1996] 1 WLR 67, [1995] UKPC 46
Bailii
Citing:
Cited – Domican v The Queen 1992
(Australia) Mason CJ said: ‘A trial judge is not absolved from his or her duty to give general and specific warnings concerning the danger of convicting on identification evidence because there is other evidence, which, if accepted, is sufficient to . .
Cited by:
Cited – Phipps v The Director of Public Prosecutions and Another PC 27-Jun-2012
phipps_dppPC2012
(Jamaica) The defendant appealed against his conviction for murder. He complained that he had been prejudiced because the jury were told that he had been produced from custody, and one of his witnesses was produced in court in chains, thus . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Criminal Evidence, Commonwealth
Updated: 16 December 2021; Ref: scu.89184
