The court considered issues relating to the impact of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 s.28 and the pre-recorded cross-examination of vulnerable child witnesses, and provided guidance regarding best practice for trial judges and advocates.
A jury’s findings on a trial of the facts that a defendant with severe learning difficulties who was unfit to plead had committed two offences of rape were safe, notwithstanding the fact that an extract of the defendant’s police interview had been wrongly admitted as evidence.
The judge had been wrong to admit documents, prepared by police officers, giving details of methods used in the commission of offences of which the appellant had been previously convicted, but the appellant’s convictions for the instant offences were nevertheless safe. It was important that the formal procedures referred to in R. v Hanson (Nicky) […]
