Criminal Justice Act 2003: Hearsay Provisions
| Date | 01 October 2006 |
| Published date | 01 October 2006 |
| DOI | 10.1350/jcla.2006.70.5.372 |
| Subject Matter | Divisional Court |
Criminal Justice Act 2003: Hearsay Provisions
Maher v Director of Public Prosecutions [2006] EWHC 1271
D had been convicted of careless driving and failing to stop and report an
accident. The prosecution alleged that she had driven into a parked car,
owned by O, in a supermarket car park and, having surveyed the
damage caused, driven off. A witness, W, noted down the registration
details of D’s car and left the note under the wiper of the damaged
vehicle. When O and his girlfriend, G, returned to the vehicle, they saw
the damage, and G rang the police and read out the registration number
from the note. The registration number was noted in the Police Incident
Log. D admitted to being the driver of the vehicle which had allegedly
caused the damage, and admitted to being in the car and car park at the
material time. However, she denied being involved in a collision. The
prosecution were permitted to adduce the Police Incident Log at trial;
the magistrates took the view that it was an admissible business docu-
ment within the terms of s. 117 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (‘the
2003 Act’). At trial, D objected to the adduction of the Log, and she
appealed against conviction on the basis that the Log should have been
treated as inadmissible hearsay.
HELD, DISMISSING THE APPEAL, although the magistrates were in error
in admitting the evidence under s. 117 of the 2003 Act, had their
attention been drawn to ss 114(2) and 121(1) of the Act (provisions
relating, respectively, to the admission, in the interests of justice, of
hearsay evidence and multiple hearsay evidence), they would inevitably
have reached the same conclusion. The Log could not be an admissible
business document under s. 117 because s. 117(2)(c) required that ‘each
person . . . through whom the information [in the Log] was supplied . . .
received the information in the course of a trade [etc.] . . .’. The chain, so
to speak, was broken by G, who did not receive the information which
found its way into the Log in the course of a trade, etc. It would have
been otherwise, if, rather than leaving a note of the registration number
under the windscreen wiper, W had informed a car-park attendant.
Section 117 of the 2003 Act states:
(1) In criminal proceedings a statement contained in a document is
admissible as evidence of any matter stated if—
(a) oral evidence given in the proceedings would be admissible as
evidence of that matter,
(b) the requirements of subsection (2) are satisfied, and
(c) the requirements of subsection (5) are satisfied, in a case where
subsection (4) requires them to be.
(2) The requirements of this subsection are satisfied if—
(a) the document or the part containing the statement was created
or received by a person in the course of a trade, business,
profession or other occupation, or as the holder of a paid or
unpaid office,
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Criminal Justice Act 2003: Hearsay Provisions
(b) the person who supplied the information contained in the state-
ment (the relevant person) had or may reasonably be supposed
to have had personal knowledge of the matters dealt with, and
(c) each person (if any) through whom the information was sup-
plied from the relevant person to the person mentioned in
paragraph (a) received the information in the course of a trade,
business, profession or other occupation, or as the holder of a
paid or unpaid office.
(3) The persons mentioned in paragraphs (a) and (b) of subsection (2)
may be the same person.
(4) The additional requirements of subsection (5) must be satisfied if the
statement—
(a) was prepared for the purposes of pending or contemplated crim-
inal proceedings, or for a criminal investigation, but
(b) was not obtained pursuant to a request...
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