Review: Evidence
| Author | Sarah Goom |
| DOI | 10.1350/ijep.2008.12.2.178 |
| Published date | 01 April 2008 |
| Date | 01 April 2008 |
| Subject Matter | Review |
REVIEW
REVIEW
Andrew L-T Choo
EVIDENCE
Oxford University Press (Oxford, 2006) xxxviii + 436pp, pb £25.99
It is no surprise that in the wake of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, with its radical
changes to the law on hearsay and bad character, a slew of new editions and texts
on evidence followed. Andrew Choo lays his cards on the table from the start. The
preface states that in attempting to cover the main topics, he will focus on ‘issues
of contemporary concern’ and will draw on ‘comparative material and a variety of
socio-legal, empirical, and non-legal, such as psychological, material’ (p. xiii). He
keeps his promise as the text and footnotes are littered with references to
Bentham and Dworkin, and with illustrative cases from both ECHR and common
law jurisdictions.
The structure is fairly conventional, proceeding through chapters on: confessions;
the right to silence; privilege; identification evidence; character; hearsay; expert
evidence; competence and compellability; and the burden and standard of proof;
although the coverage is not as comprehensive as the more traditional texts of say,
Keane, The Modern Law of Evidence. However, his approach permits the development
of some interesting themes. In his introduction he addresses what he describes as
‘Free(r) Proof’, referring to Twining’s definition of free proof as ‘natural or common
sense modes of reasoning about facts at trial, unconstrained by artificial, mandat-
ory precepts, such as strict rules excluding classes of evidence or witnesses’ (p. 18).
Choo notes, and demonstrates throughout the book, that ‘the courts’ response
to allegedly unreliable evidence is increasingly to decline to exclude it al-
together from the jury’s consideration, but to allow the jury to evaluate it
after being provided with an appropriate warning by the trial judge’ (p. 18). He
regrets that this trend ‘has not been accompanied by any real development of
rules governing the evaluation of admitted evidence’ (p. 18). Experience since
the book’s publication of the courts’ guidance on the bad character provisions
seems to suggest this criticism may be a little unfair. The cases of RvHanson,1Rv
DOI:1350/ijep.2008.12.2.295
178 (2008) 12 E&P 178–179 THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF EVIDENCE & PROOF
1 [2005] EWCA Crim 824.
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