Judicial Committee of the Privy Council
| DOI | 10.1177/002201839005400205 |
| Date | 01 May 1990 |
| Published date | 01 May 1990 |
| Subject Matter | Judicial Committee of the Privy Council |
JUDICIAL
COMMITTEE
OF
THE
PRIVY
COUNCIL
IDENTIFICATION IN MURDER CASES
Junior Reid v. The Queen
In recent years there has been a wealth of authoritative decisions
and statements relating to evidence of visual identification in cases
of murder. Junior Reidv. The Queen [1989] 3 W.L.R. 771 afforded
the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council an opportunity to
review that authority and the principles relating to the admission
of evidence of visual identification and to the manner in which the
jury should be directed thereon. Four separate incidents in each
of which the victim was shot and killed led to the conviction of
each of the defendants in three of the trials and to that of the
three defendants in the fourth case. With the exception of one
defendant, who after due caution had admitted being present at
the scene of the shooting, the evidence against the defendants was
that of visual identification. Although the Court of Appeal of
Jamaica dismissed all the appeals, the Board allowed all the
appeals except that of the defendant who had made the admission.
In most of the categories of evidence which the courts have
considered to be unreliable, so that special warnings and directions
have to be given to the jury, it is the nature of the witness
which causes the evidence to fall into that
category-ehildren,
complainants of sexual attack, accomplices and so on.
It
is,
however, as the Board remarked, only recently that identification
evidence has been recognised to be in a class of its own, requiring
similar warnings and directions. There is nothing in the nature of
the witness which requires such action on the part of the judge,
since anyone may happen to be on the scene of a crime. In 1963,
however, the Irish court, in The People (A.-G.) v. Casey
(No.2)
[1963]
I.R.
33, declared that the jury should be told that some
persons convicted on the basis of visual identification have later
proved that evidence to be erroneous (see
per
Kingsmill Moore
J.,
at pp. 39-40). After further cases of miscarriage of justice arising
240
To continue reading
Request your trial