Bad Character Evidence Case Study - UK Essays.
Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of UK Essays. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate what a bad character evidence(BCE) is and whether Liam Parrish’s(LP) BCE of previous convictions should be.
Bad character evidence should be excluded if it is unfairly prejudicial. The courts should be reluctant to admit bad character evidence in case the jury are prejudiced by its introduction and they convict despite all other evidence against the defendant being weak.
The evidence of bad character is an interesting area which have often been brought up by academician and judges like Professor Hoffman to its disputable and uncertainty of status, and so it have been describe as a law which is complex, unprincipled and riddled with anomalies by Professor Adrian Keane.
It also covers bad character evidence whether it is adduced to directly establish guilt, to undermine credit or to provide the contextual background to an offence. The adduction of a defendant’s bad character for any purpose will be governed by s 101.
In detail, bad character evidence was confined largely to challenging a defendant’s credibility (McLeod), and character evidence is likely to be used to propensity if its probative value is far outweighs its prejudicial effect ( 33 ).
Bad character evidence To assess the credibility of the evidence, it is helpful to have the knowledge of the past behaviour or character of the defendant. The question is whether this is admissible as it could considerably damage the defendant’s reputation and credibility if they considered to be of bad character.
Although the Act did not provide a definition of bad character it was widely accepted to mean both reputation and disposition. If the accused elected to give evidence, he had a shield against cross-examination about the commission or conviction of offences not covered by the indictment, and about his bad character generally.
Evidence of a witness’s bad character did not have to amount to proof of a lack of credibility on the part of the witness. This question is concern with rules relating to the admissibility of defendant’s bad character and also the fairness of the changes made by CJA 2003. In this regard the Law Commission reports on bad character in 2002. (37).
While evidence of bad character of the plaintiff may be given in order to mitigate the extent of damages, evidence of good character may not be given in order to increase the extent of liability. Similarly in cases of guardianship, the character of the proposed guardian becomes relevant.
Bad character evidence Bad character is evidence of, or a disposition towards, misconduct on the part of the defendant, rather than evidence relating to the facts in issue. The Criminal Justice Act 2003 ( CJA ) made fundamental changes to the admissibility of evidence relating to the defendant’s character and that of victims or witnesses.
Evidence of bad character is admissible if it is relevant to an important matter in issue between the prosecution and the defendant. S 103(1)(a) states that propensity to commit offences is an important matter in issue between the prosecution and the defence (see MLE 11th edn pp 523-5256).
The objective of this paper is to demonstrate what a bad character evidence(BCE) is and whether Liam Parrish’s(LP) BCE of previous convictions should be admitted at trial. The definition and admissibility of BC is governed by the Criminal Justice Act 2003(CJA).
Sections 98 to 113 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (CJA) represent a significant change from the accepted common law approach to the methods by which bad character evidence could be introduced in the course of criminal trial proceedings.
