The Police and the Law
| Published date | 01 July 1943 |
| Date | 01 July 1943 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0032258X4301600302 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
The
Police
and
the
Law
STATEMENTS
MADE
TO
COURT
BY
POLICE
OFFICERS
AFTER
A
CONVICTION
"
POR
many years it has been' known
that
after the conviction of a
prisoner it is the duty of some responsible officer of Police to
tell the Court what he knows about the prisoner as the result of inquiry,
where it would involve great difficulty and expense to prove the facts
by legal evidence. . . . At times, no doubt,· police officers on these
occasions say more than they ought to say against prisoners." This
was said by a former Lord Chief Justice in
1911
(R. v.
Campbell,
6Cr.
App. R. 131), and the same matter was recently discussed by
Mr.
Justice Humphreys in R. v. Burton (28 Cr. App. R. 89), a case which
was noted in this
JOURNAL
last October (vol. xv, page 248).
In
R. v,
on what was said in these two cases.
There
was an application for leave to appeal against a sentence
of fifteen months imprisonment passed by the Recorder on a conviction
of larceny. After conviction a police officer was called; he gave the age
of the convicted woman and the main details of her life for some ten or
twelve years.
It
appeared
that
the
first part of this police statement was
unobjectionable,
but
the latter part ought not to have been given.
If
the
Recorder, in sentencing the woman, had paid attention to these state-
ments and had sentenced her on the basis
that
they were true, the
Court of Criminal Appeal
might
have reduced the sentence. But it
seemed plain
that
the Recorder had sentenced her on the assumption
that she was a woman of good character.
It
was, therefore, only
necessary for the Court of Criminal Appeal to pronounce on
the
propriety of police officers who are called to assist the judge in such
circumstances in making general statements about other offences and
so forth.
In
giving the judgment of the Court, Lord Caldecote, C.J., said:
" When a police officer is called to give evidence about a man who has
been convicted, he should in general limit himself to such matters as
previous convictions, if any, and antecedents of the prisoner, including
anything
that
has been ascertained about his home and upbringing in
cases where the age of the person convicted makes this information
material. We think that it is also the duty of the police officer to inform
the Court of any matters, whether or not the subject of the charges
which are to be taken into consideration, which he believes are not
disputed by the prisoner and ought to be known by the Court. Police
officers should inform the Court of anything in the prisoner's favour
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