JURIES
Mistrusting a jury:
- Secrecy
- No documents produced
- No penalty for a wrong decision
- Prejudice, irrationality, bias.
- How can we be sure that these people will be trusted?
- Fidelity?
This is the guiding philosophy of the role of evidence – trusting a jury.
• If there is powerful evidence of oppression in confession the jury may not be told that
the confession even occurred
• It’s all about controlling evidence – admissibility.
• Strict controls over what is revealed and what is concealed
• ‘disregard what you have just heard’.
• You can’t delete it from your brain.
• By being told to forget something, It actually lodges it even further into your head.
• So, if evidence is unfair or prejudicial – the jury should not be told about it in the first
place.
• The majority of cases now don’t even have a jury present.
Should we relax the exclusionary rule?
• Still necessary
1. Provide a focus
2. on the trial
3. Save time
- If something is marginally unfair it is thought to be better just to exclude it entirely
- Saving time is one of the main pillars of our law of evidence
4. Trials more likely to be fair
5. Protect integrity of verdicts.
- Copper faceting verdicts.
RELEVANCE
• All evidence admitted must be relevant to the case
• The rest will not be admissible
• Relevant?
DPP v Kilbourne
Lord Simon
Mistrusting a jury:
- Secrecy
- No documents produced
- No penalty for a wrong decision
- Prejudice, irrationality, bias.
- How can we be sure that these people will be trusted?
- Fidelity?
This is the guiding philosophy of the role of evidence – trusting a jury.
• If there is powerful evidence of oppression in confession the jury may not be told that
the confession even occurred
• It’s all about controlling evidence – admissibility.
• Strict controls over what is revealed and what is concealed
• ‘disregard what you have just heard’.
• You can’t delete it from your brain.
• By being told to forget something, It actually lodges it even further into your head.
• So, if evidence is unfair or prejudicial – the jury should not be told about it in the first
place.
• The majority of cases now don’t even have a jury present.
Should we relax the exclusionary rule?
• Still necessary
1. Provide a focus
2. on the trial
3. Save time
- If something is marginally unfair it is thought to be better just to exclude it entirely
- Saving time is one of the main pillars of our law of evidence
4. Trials more likely to be fair
5. Protect integrity of verdicts.
- Copper faceting verdicts.
RELEVANCE
• All evidence admitted must be relevant to the case
• The rest will not be admissible
• Relevant?
DPP v Kilbourne
Lord Simon
