Juries 'should hear phone taps' to nail crime gangs

[David Swarbrick]

I do not think that warnings from the judge are sufficient. It is the
judicial system playing pontius pilate. 'I daredn't say that theprosecution
do not have enough proper evidence, so I will leave you to take my 'nod and
a wink' and just act upon tehevidence anyway. They are a silent permission
to the jury to ignore the warning and allow prejudice to prevail.


David Swarbrick, www.lawindexpro.co.uk
david.swarbrick@lawindexpro.co.uk Tel: +44(0)1484 384767
lawindexpro - where case law finds a home

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ukcrypto-admin@chiark.greenend.org.uk
> [mailto:ukcrypto-admin@chiark.greenend.org.uk]On Behalf Of Brian
> Morrison
> Sent: 12 September 2002 17:01
> To: ukcrypto@chiark.greenend.org.uk
> Subject: Re: Juries 'should hear phone taps' to nail crime gangs
>
>
> On Thu, 12 Sep 2002 13:19:27 +0100, David Swarbrick wrote:
>
> >The basic difficulty about evidence obtained covertly is that if the
> >system is to be fair to the defendant, he must be able to challenge the
> >content and reliability of the evidence as evidence. There will be many
> >situations where a prosecutor woud not ant to disclose enough
> >information to allow that fairness. If he cannot, or will not, then I
> >do not think he should be allowed to use it. If he can then I do not
> >think there should be a huge problem.
>
> So what is needed is the equivalent to the caution where a person is
> warned about a court taking inference from their silence. The court
> should say "The prosecution wishes to present evidence obtained and
> verified in a manner that they are not prepared to disclose. In the
> light of this please infer that very little credence can be placed upon
> it". I know that there is sometimes good corroboration of such veiled
> information, but in cases where it is not that might tip the scales
> back towards the defence.
>
> --
> Brian Morrison                                       bdm@fenrir.org.uk
>               do you know how far this has gone?
>                just how damaged have I become?
>                                       'Even Deeper' by Nine Inch Nails
>
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