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In law, a verdict is the formal finding of fact made by a jury on matters or questions submitted to the jury by a judge. In a bench trial, the judge's decision near the end of the trial is simply referred to as a finding. In England and Wales, a coroner's findings used to be called verdicts but are, since 2009, called conclusions.
Beyond a reasonable doubt is a legal standard of proof required to validate a criminal conviction in most adversarial legal systems. It is a higher standard of proof than the balance of probabilities and is usually therefore reserved for criminal matters where what is at stake is considered more serious and therefore deserving of a higher threshold.
Geoffrey Dawson Lane, Baron Lane, was a British Judge who served as Lord Chief Justice of England from 1980 to 1992. The later part of his term was marred by a succession of disputed convictions. Lane's critics claimed that his refusal to believe that police evidence could be institutionally corrupt, and his reluctance to overturn the verdict of a jury, "represented a dangerous hindrance to justice". His failure to allow the appeal of the Birmingham Six in 1988 led to calls for his resignation following their successful appeal in 1991; an editorial in The Times "urged him to go", while 140 members of parliament signed a House of Commons motion to that effect.
In the law of criminal evidence, a confession is a statement by a suspect in crime which is adverse to that person. Some secondary authorities, such as Black's Law Dictionary, define a confession in more narrow terms, e.g. as "a statement admitting or acknowledging all facts necessary for conviction of a crime," which would be distinct from a mere admission of certain facts that, if true, would still not, by themselves, satisfy all the elements of the offense. The equivalent in civil cases is a statement against interest.
Murder is an offence under the common law of England and Wales. It is considered the most serious form of homicide, in which one person kills another with the intention to cause either death or serious injury unlawfully. The element of intentionality was originally termed malice aforethought, although it required neither malice nor premeditation. Baker, chapter 14 states that many killings done with a high degree of subjective recklessness were treated as murder from the 12th century right through until the 1974 decision in DPP v Hyam.
In English law, provocation was a mitigatory defence to murder which had taken many guises over generations many of which had been strongly disapproved and modified. In closing decades, in widely upheld form, it amounted to proving a reasonable total loss of control as a response to another's objectively provocative conduct sufficient to convert what would otherwise have been murder into manslaughter. It only applied to murder. It was abolished on 4 October 2010 by section 56(1) of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009, but thereby replaced by the superseding—and more precisely worded—loss of control.
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The right to silence in England and Wales is the protection given to a person during criminal proceedings from adverse consequences of remaining silent. It is sometimes referred to as the privilege against self-incrimination. It is used on any occasion when it is considered the person(s) being spoken to is under suspicion of having committed one or more criminal offences and consequently thus potentially being subject to criminal proceedings.
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The role of expert witnesses in English law is to give explanations of difficult or technical topics in civil and criminal trials, to assist the fact finding process. The extent to which authorities have been allowed to testify, and on what topics, has been debated, and to this end a variety of criteria have evolved throughout English case law.
R v Wang (2005) in the criminal law of England and Wales is the binding precedent, from the highest court, that a judge in England or in Wales is not entitled to direct, or instruct, order or require, a jury to return a verdict of guilty.
Regina v Armel Gnango[2011] UKSC 59 is the leading English criminal law case on the interaction of joint enterprise, transferred malice, and exemption from criminal liability where a party to what would normally be a crime is the victim of it. The Supreme Court held, restoring Gnango's conviction for the murder of Magda Pniewska, that he was guilty of murder notwithstanding the fact that he had not fired the shot which killed Pniewska during the shoot out which led to her death, and that the fatal shot had been fired by his opponent in an attempt to kill him. The judgment of the Supreme Court has been criticised over the alleged extent to which it was designed to mollify public opinion, and in the context of debates over the nature of the doctrine of joint enterprise.
R v Jogee[2016] UKSC 8 was a 2016 judgment of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom that reversed previous case law on joint enterprise. The Supreme Court delivered its ruling jointly with the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, which was considering an appeal from Jamaica, Ruddock v The Queen [2016] UKPC 7.
In the context of a Jury trial, the term unsafe verdict refers to a judicial finding that a jury's guilty verdict is unsafe and should be overturned. Unsafe verdicts can be made for either legal or factual reasons.
M v R or M v The Queen is an Australian legal case decided in the High Court. It is an important authority in the field of criminal law, for the circumstances in which it is permissible for a jury's guilty verdict to be overturned by a judge. The case involved an appeal against criminal conviction by a father, against allegations of sexual assault and rape by his daughter. His appeal was allowed by majority.
References
- ↑ R v Cooper [1969] 1 All ER 32.
- ↑ Roberts, Stephanie (2004). "The Royal Commission on Criminal Justice and Factual Innocence: Remedying Wrongful Convictions in the Court of Appeal". Justice Journal. 1 (2): 86. SSRN 1296555.
- ↑ Ashworth, Andrew; Redmayne, Mike (10 June 2010). The Criminal Process. Oxford University Press. pp. 379–380. ISBN 978-0-19-954728-9.
- ↑ R v Bamber [2002] EWCA Crim 2912, para 513
- ↑ Criticism http://www.criminallawandjustice.co.uk/features/Lurking-Doubts-Remain
- ↑ R v B [2005] EWCA Crim 63
- ↑ Gillespie, Alisdair (18 April 2013). The English Legal System. Oxford University Press. p. 470. ISBN 978-0-19-965709-4.
- ↑ Privy Council http://nzcriminallaw.blogspot.co.uk/2007/03/lurking-doubts.html
- ↑ Jersey appeal reform "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 17 October 2014. Retrieved 17 October 2014.
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