On Wed, 25 Apr 2012 18:34:43 +0100, Tim Richards
<
tricha...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>I knew I'd read previously where things had been revealed after trial
>and mention was made of the fact that it couldn't have been mentioned
>before verdict.
>Which is bizarre. If I've been accused eight times previously of
>setting fire to people's cats and I'm up on a ninth charge of the
>same, surely the jury need to be aware of that?
The fact that you had been accused of setting fire to cats previously
is quite possibly the *only* reason you were suspected when a ninth
cat was set alight. If it also becomes evidence that is used to
convict you, then you end up with having people arrested and convicted
of a crime they had nothing to do with simply because they had been
convicted of similar crimes previously.
Think about it - at present the CPS will not prosecute a person simply
because they have a history of committing similar offences, because
they know that without that fact known by the jury, there will need to
be significant additional evidence. If however previous convictions
*was* admitted as evidence, the CPS may well decide that that is
almost all that will be needed to convict you (especially wrt emotive
cases such as child abuse etc.) - along with a smattering of weak
circumstantial evidence that would probably apply to thousands of
people. And each time a person is convicted, it will require less
evidence to convict the next time. Eventually the police will not
have to do any work to detect a crime - they just select a name at
random from a list of people who have a long history of the same sort
of crime, determine that the person does not have a verifyable alibi,
and throw the chap at a jury who will almost certainly think exactly
as you do - that past convictions are good evidence of guilt.
Where "similar fact" evidence *may* be used these days (and the change
is relatively recent) is in a case where there are certain unusual and
unique characteristics to the crime, or when the defendent is using
the same excuse as a defence that they used in a previous trial.
Whilst I do not have an issue with the second case (a person is
unlikely to make the same mistake or error of judgement a second
time), I have reservations about the first due to a fairly good
possibility that there is a "copycat" criminal who has emulated a
crime they heard about from the media or elsewhere.
--
Cynic