Recent Judicial Decisions
| Author | W. H. D. Winder |
| Published date | 01 January 1963 |
| Date | 01 January 1963 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0032258X6303600104 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
W.
H.
D.
WINDER,
M.A.,
LL.M.
Legal Correspondent
of
THE
POLICE
JOURNAL
RECENT
dUDlfJlAL
DEfJlSIONS
TAPE RECORDING EVIDENCE
R. v. Mills
As the law stands at present there is really no direct authority on
the question whether or
not
a record of sounds taken by a tape
recording machine is, as such, admissible in evidence. Such authority
as was brought to the attention of the
Court
of Criminal Appeal in
R. v. Mills [1962] 3 All E.R. 298, favours an affirmative answer to
that question but, according to the judgment in this case, it is at
least doubtful whether the precise point was fully and closely argued
in any
of
the previous cases.
Nor
was it necessary for the
Court
in
R. v. Mills to deal with all aspects of the question.
It
was not a case
in which the tape recording was itself introduced in evidence,
that
is,
there was no production of the record, by sound, to the jury.
It
was, however, held not to be contrary to law that a tape recording
machine should have been employed as part of the mechanism which
resulted in evidence of an incriminating conversation in a police cell
being given to the jury.
The two appellants, together with two other men, were charged
with burglary and larceny, were cautioned and were confined in
separate cells in a local police station, pending trial. A corridor
divided the cells from each other and a tape recording machine was
placed in a nearby empty cell. The four men shouted incriminating
remarks to one another across the corridor. At the trial, a policeman
gave evidence
that
he himself heard and remembered the various
remarks which passed between the appellants and that he could
confirm from his own human memory the accuracy of records of
these conversations which were on the tape
and
which he
had
caused
the machine to play back to him for the purpose of checking and
improving his own note made from memory. The tape recording was
not
itself used in evidence, nor was any device of concealing a
microphone in a cell in order to pick up conversations conducted
between occupants of the same cell employed. There was no sug-
gestion
that
the tape had been tampered with between the time when
the conversations took place and the time when the policeman
played it back in order to check and improve his own note.
34 January 1963
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