Recent Judicial Decisions
| Date | 01 October 1948 |
| Published date | 01 October 1948 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X4802100403 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
THE
POLICE
JOURNAL
means of meeting it or
try
to discover flaws in it.
It
was said that
considering the nature of police notebooks, as it must be assumed to be,
they were a class of document which was privileged from production,
provided
that
their contents justified the swearing of such an affidavit
as was sworn.
There
was no reason to doubt the accuracy of
the
affidavit. A note taken at the time of the alleged assault or false
imprisonment, such as was presumably contained in
the
notebooks,
might well be in substance the evidence which the defendants would
give to the court in support of their defence and they might also, though
not
necessarily, contain the names of other witnesses whom
the
defendants might desire to call.
The
Court made it quite clear
that
their decision did not, of course, mean
that
production of any police-
man's notebook could be refused in circumstances of an action for
assault or false imprisonment or could always properly be covered by
an affidavit in similar terms to
that
sworn in Brooks v. Prescott.
It
is
possible
that
such anotebook might contain entries helpful to
the
plaintiff to establish his case.
It
is, perhaps, desirable to add
that
the
exemption of
the
notebooks from preliminary production did
not
rest
on any privilege peculiar to the Police, nor on any special grounds of
public
policy;
the
exemption was simply an application of a general
rule relating to orders for discovery.
Recent Judicial Decisions
THE
EVIDENCE OF A
POLICE
DOCTOR
R. v. Nowell
ALT HO UGH it is common practice to describe the professional
man who is called by the Police to examine a person who has been,
or is to be, charged with an offence involving drunkenness as the
" police doctor " or
the"
police surgeon,"
the
evidence which he gives
in court is regarded as
the
evidence of a professional
man
giving
independent expert evidence with no other desire than to assist
the
court. He is not, at least in England, to be regarded as one who is
acting as the hand of the Police.
This
was laid down by the Court of
Criminal Appeal in R. v. Nowell (1948, 1
All
E.R.
794).
The
appellant was seen by police officers to drive his car on the
wrong side of the road and without lights at night. On examination it
appeared to
the
officers
that
he was drunk and they took him to the
police station on a charge under section 15
(I)
of
the
Road Traffic Act,
1930, of driving amotor-car while under the influence of drink. At
the
police station
the
ordinary procedure was carried out,
that
is to say the
officer-in-charge was told what the charge was, and he then informed
the
appellant
that
adoctor would be sent for to examine him.
This
practice is the result of a general order which was issued to the police
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