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LPC Law Notes Criminal Litigation Notes

Evidential Issues & Bad Character Notes

Updated Evidential Issues & Bad Character Notes

Criminal Litigation Notes

Criminal Litigation

Approximately 143 pages

A collection of the best LPC Criminal Litigation notes the director of Oxbridge Notes (an Oxford law graduate) could find after combing through dozens of LPC samples from outstanding students with the highest results in England and carefully evaluating each on accuracy, formatting, logical structure, spelling/grammar, conciseness and "wow-factor".

In short these are what we believe to be the strongest set of Criminal Lit notes available in the UK this year. This collection of notes is fully up...

The following is a more accessible plain text extract of the PDF sample above, taken from our Criminal Litigation Notes. Due to the challenges of extracting text from PDFs, it will have odd formatting:

Criminal Litigation

Evidential Issues & Bad Character

Evidential Issues

1. Plea and Case Management Hearing [PCMH form]

  • Advocates Questionnaire

  • Evidential burden: Prosecution must satisfy otherwise D can argue there is no case to answer.

  • Evidence must be: Relevant and admissible!

  • Burden of Proof – CPS have the legal burden [to prove facts of the case – i.e. Actus Reus and Mens Rea].

  • Standard of proof for prosecution = beyond reasonable doubt.

2. Issue of evidence that is improperly obtained.

  • S.78 PACE

If the admission of the evidence would have such an adverse effect on the fairness of the proceedings that the court ought not to admit it.

[e.g. breach of Code C / PACE]

  • S.76 (2) PACE

Confessions which are obtained as a result of violence or threats

Oppression; or

Something said or done which in the circumstances makes it unreliable.

3. Procedure for challenging admissibility of evidence:

  • Crown court = admissibility is decided by judge, in absence of the jury in the Voir Dire [takes place before trial]. If evidence is excluded, jury will never know about its existence.

  • Magistrates court = admissibility decided by magistrates, either:

Pre-trial review

At a trial

Following D’s submissions of no case to answer at end of P case; or

At end of trial.

Bad character

General rule under Crime and Justice Act 2003: evidence of previous convictions is not admissible.

  • S.101 CJA 2003: provides seven gateways through which evidence of a defendant’s bad character can be admitted.

101(a) Agreement between parties that it is admissible
101(b) Evidence is adduced by D himself or given in an answer in the cross- examination.
101(1)(c) It is necessary to explain something relevant in the case
S.101(1)(d)

Adducing evidence is relevant to important matter in issue between D and the prosecution.

S.103: Does D have the propensity to commit the offence with which he is charged. [prosecution will try to admit previous convictions as evidence that this is the case].

What to look for: Evidence that D has been convicted of:

(a) The same offence [e.g. murder for murder; ABH for ABH etc]

(b) The same category – which is prescribed by order of the Secretary of State e.g. theft / sexual offences

(c) The offence is of the...

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