Volume 9, Issue 2 - Anomalies in US Evidence Law

This introduction to a series of essays on anomalies of US evidence law briefly reflects on how anomalous US evidence law is as compared with other jurisdictions. The four essays in the series are then summarised.

This essay analyses the decisions of the United States Supreme Court on the allocation of the burden of proof in relation to criminal defences. The Court seems generally comfortable about letting the accused carry the persuasive burden of proving excuses and justifications. It is seemingly different in those other common law countries where the so-called ‘golden thread’ proclaimed by the House of Lords in Woolmington v DPP holds sway, and where it is accepted as a general rule that the prosecution must disprove beyond reasonable doubt any defence that has been put in issue. This essay explores and tries to explain this difference. The divergence is explicable as a matter of legal history, but at the bottom of it are arguably a conceptual dispute on the offence-defence distinction and competing visions of politics that bear on the theory of the criminal trial.

The admissibility of unlawfully obtained evidence in criminal proceedings has generated controversy throughout the common law world. In the United States, there has been renewed debate in recent years over the propriety of the judicially-created exclusionary rule as a remedy for violations of the Fourth Amendment guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures. When defining the scope and purpose of the rule, the US Supreme Court has placed ever increasing emphasis on the likely deterrent effect which suppressing evidence will exert on law enforcement. This article explores the consequent restriction of the exclusionary rule evinced in the contemporary case law including United States v Herring in which the Supreme Court expanded the scope of the so-called "good faith" exception. In conclusion it offers reflection from the perspective of another common law country, Ireland, where the exclusion of unconstitutionally obtained evidence has been the subject of debate.

This paper discusses the relationship between the English hearsay rule and the principles governing the right to a fair trial under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. While the provisions serve similar purposes, they do not always produce the same result. Two sorts of cases are discussed: cases where the hearsay rule admits evidence that should be excluded because it violates the defendant’s right to examine or have examined the witnesses against him, and cases where the hearsay rule excludes evidence that should be admitted to protect the defendant’s right to a fair trial. The treatment of these cases is contrasted to the treatment of similar cases under the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

This contribution examines the idea that partisan witness preparation in criminal trials in the United States amounts to a comparative anomaly in the common law context. In American procedure, parties are not constrained by straightforward rules and ethical canons in their choice and deployment of preparation techniques, save for a prohibition on subornation and use of perjury. The lax regulation of pre-trial witness interviews in the US contrasts with the stricter rules on professional conduct of barristers and prosecutors in England and Wales and the cautious attitude towards extensive witness preparation prevailing in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. These divisions mark deep-seated differences between these countries in what fact-finding arrangements are deemed optimal in the criminal process and what importance is given to witness spontaneity as opposed to a leeway for parties to shape the evidence submitted for evaluation to the fact-finder. Although comparative divergence alone does not render the US approach ‘anomalous’, the difficulty of reconciling its liberal practice with the trial system’s quest for the truth in a sense justifies this label. Some of the excesses of the current practice could be remedied and the truth-finding objective given a more prominent place in the criminal process if a stricter approach were taken towards the regulation of witness preparation in the US and legal and ethical norms were aligned more closely to establishing the truth. In distinguishing between ethical and unethical conduct, the rules should consider not only the mental element of counsel but also the objective effects of preparation on the authenticity and accuracy of witness recollection. While more research into such effects is needed, the article argues tentatively that the most suggestive and therefore objectionable techniques used in the US should be abandoned or subjected to more rigorous regulation.