Court of Criminal Appeal
| DOI | 10.1177/002201835802200405 |
| Published date | 01 October 1958 |
| Date | 01 October 1958 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Court of
Criminal
Appeal
EVIDENCE AS TO WITNESS'S PREVIOUS CONTRADICTORY STATEMENT
R. v. Hart
ACCORDING
to s. 4 of the Criminal Procedure Act, 1865,
./"\. if a witness gives evidence of a fact directly relevant to
the
issue (as distinct from a matter going only to credit), it can be
put
to him
that
on some previous occasion he has made a
contradictory statement to another person, and if he denies it,
that
other person can be called to give affirmative evidence ofthe
statement.
This
rule applies to statements of every kind and is
not
confined to statements on oath or by way of depositions or
in writing.
The
law was applied in this sense in R. v. Hart
(42 Cr. App. R. 47) where it was held that
the
Common
Serjeant had erred in excluding evidence.
The
appellant was convicted at
the
Central Criminal
Court
of wounding with intent to do grievous bodily harm as a
result of attacking one Hwith a knife.
The
appellant's case
was
that
he picked up the knife because Hcame at him with a
bottle and struck him on
the
head.
There
were two witnesses
who saw a part or a whole of the incident. One was C, who
said
that
Hhad not got a bottle,
and
one was a man, D, who
said that, although he
did
not see
that
Hhad any bottle, he
heard
the
sound of a bottle breaking. C was called as a witness
for
the
prosecution and said
that
Hhad not got a bottle, and,
when
the
matter was
put
to
him
in cross-examination, denied
that
he had told D
that
Hhad got a bottle. Dwas called as a
witness for
the
defence, and counsel for the defence desired
to ask him for his version of
the
conversation with C.
The
Common Serjeant refused to admit the evidence.
The
provision under which the evidence was sought to
be made admissible is now contained in s. 4 of the Criminal
Procedure Act, 1865, which re-enacted the Common Law
Procedure Act, 1854. According to the
judgment
of the Court
(Lord
Goddard, C.]., Devlin and Pearson, JJ.), which was
delivered by Devlin,
J.,
before that Act it had probably been
the common law that, quite apart trom any statute, questions
286
To continue reading
Request your trial