Lord Carloway interviewed by @rapecrisisscot. Of interest to students of contemporary debates in criminal procedure https://t.co/mWUypm9ILl
— GCU Law (@GCULaw) February 29, 2016
And that’s the exact opposite of what
a jury is expecting so I think there’s
issues with perception of demeanour
just now anyway under the current
circumstances.
We have that kind of situation where
the alleged victim, or survivor as you’re
putting it, is trying to hold it all together
and we have many situations in which
the witness will crumple before the jury.
If we had a situation where the jury are
not there, it ought to make life a lot easier
for a person to give evidence in a less
stressful situation. Again, we go back
to the problem that we have with the
current system, which presupposes two
things, first of all that people’s memory
improves with time, and secondly that
people give better evidence under stress.
That’s something which is dealt with in
the literature, and I think modern thinking
is that it’s not really a good way of going
about things.