Rosemary Pattenden

Racial bias and the English Criminal Trial Jury

IN the 2001 census, nine per cent of the population of England and Wales were not classified as white. Racial tensions undeniably exist and it is probable that amongst the individuals randomly selected from the electoral roll to serve as jurors there will be some with race-related prejudices. By this we mean the inclination to prejudge others using pejorative stereotypes based on perceptions of “race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin”.

The Exclusion of the Clergy from Criminal Trial Juries: An Historical Perspective

Schedule 1 to the Juries Act 1974 provides that ‘[a] man in holy orders; a regular minister of any religious denomination [and] [a] vowed member of any religious order living in a monastery, convent or other religious community’ is ineligible to serve on a criminal (and also a civil) jury. This has been the law since 1972. For the remainder of this century members of the clergy have been eligible, but not compellable, jurors. In practice they did not serve. The change effected in 1972 is a reversion to the position which probably prevailed in the Middle Ages. Aside from the occasional official report, the liability of religious functionaries to serve on juries in criminal trials has been rarely written about. The last time it happened was in 1882. The object of this article is to fill the lacuna by tracing the history of the clergys ineligibility for jury service in criminal trials and the reasons for it.

The Discretionary Exclusion of Relevant Evidence in English Civil Proceedings

Her object was to avoid civil courts being troubled by superfluous testimony. This article examines previous English and Commonwealth authority on the discretionary exclusion of admissible evidence in civil proceedings and then addresses the question: should England introduce a statutory discretion along the lines of rule \03 of the Federal Rules of Evidence, to which Butler-Sloss LJ specifically alluded in her judgment, or s. 55 of the Australian Evidence Act 1995 (Cth.)? The need for such a discretion is inextricably caught up with a further issue, that of how relevance is defined. This question is explored at some length. Many of the civil cases in which the discretionary exclusion of evidence has been mentioned have involved similar fact evidence. Therefore, this article will also examine the principles governing the admissibility of similar fact evidence in civil proceedings to determine whether these can co-exist with an exclusionary discretion.

Informal judicial admissions of criminal activity: a comparative study of England, Canada and the United States

INFORMAL1 admissions2 which are against a partys interest are admissible against that party in both civil and criminal proceedings.3 In criminal trials where the admission was made to a policeman the prosecution must show that it was made voluntarily.4 The bulk of the literature dealing with incriminating statements is concerned with confessions to the police; this article, in contrast, will examine the use in criminal and civil actions of a statement which incriminates its maker in a crime and which was made during judicial proceedings. England, Canada and the United States of America, the three countries which will be considered and compared, show some interesting diversity in the treatment of this sort of evidence.