Effect of Bad Character Evidence on Juries.
Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of UK Essays. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate what a bad character evidence (BCE) is and whether Liam Parrish’s (LP) BCE of previous convictions should be admitted at trial.Bad character evidence should be excluded if it is unfairly prejudicial. T The courts should be reluctant to admit bad character evidence in case the jury are prejudiced by its introduction and they convict despite all other evidence against the defendant being weak.Sec-101 of CJA 2003 states that in criminal proceedings evidence of defendant’s bad character is admissible if one of the factors from sub-section 101 (1) (a)-101 (1) (g) is satisfied.In this regard we need to consider the three fold test in R v Hanson which is laid down by the Court of Appeal.
While evidence of bad character of the plaintiff may be given in order to mitigate the extent of damages, evidence of good character may not be given in order to increase the extent of liability. Similarly in cases of guardianship, the character of the proposed guardian becomes relevant.Under gateway (g) evidence of bad character will be admissible if the defendant has made an attack on another person's character. The other person is most likely to be a prosecution witness. T he rationale behind this gateway is that if the defendant attacks the character of another person the court should be aware of the defendant's character.
A possible outline for your essay is: A. Pre-2003 position under common law (non- testifying defendant) and under CEA 1898. If the defendant claimed to be of good character his bad character would be admitted. See Rowton (1865).
