Letwin wants increased penalties for refusal to decrypt

[Nicholas Bohm]

At 08:02 25/08/2002 +0100, Peter Mitchell wrote:
>Nicholas Bohm wrote:
>
> > There is no such onus in RIP:  you must produce sufficient evidence that
> > the key wasn't available to raise the issue (this may be no more than your
> > oral testimony of forgetting),
>
>
>Is it known for a fact that courts will accept this as "raising an
>issue"?

No (not by me, at least; but then I haven't had much to do with the 
criminal law professionally).

But since there are likely to be quite normal circumstances where there 
could not be expected to be any other evidence, the absence of other 
evidence ought not by itself to mean that the issue has not been raised.

The need for oral testimony may oblige you to give evidence when you would 
otherwise have been better advised to keep out of the witness box, so the 
need for it may not be cost free.  And if your evidence was utterly 
unconvincing and destroyed during cross-examination, the judge might rule 
that the issue hadn't been raised

Regards

Nicholas

Salkyns, Great Canfield,
Takeley, Bishop's Stortford CM22 6SX, UK

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PGP RSA 1024 bit public key ID: 0x08340015.  Fingerprint:
9E 15 FB 2A 54 96 24 37  98 A2 E0 D1 34 13 48 07
PGP DSS/DH 1024/3072 public key ID: 0x899DD7FF.  Fingerprint:
5248 1320 B42E 84FC 1E8B  A9E6 0912 AE66 899D D7FF