NCJ Number
82019
Date Published
1981
Length
237 pages
Annotation
This book examines the English prosecution system, especially the relationship between the legal structure and individual rights in serious criminal cases. The 5-year study is based on research carried out in Birmingham and London involving extensive contact with police officers, trial judges, lawyers, and defendants.
Abstract
The authors examine prosecutorial evidence in some 1,500 Crown Court trials, paying particular attention to police interrogation. Questioning the reliability of suspects' statements, the book also raises doubts about the value of interrogations to the investigation process itself. The study examines the safeguards designed to protect the innocent at the police station and at trial and finds them ineffective and/or inadequate. Also of concern are cases that are taken to trial by the prosecution with little prospect of conviction. The authors suggest that justices agree to hear only those cases that they deem proper for trial. In most Crown Court cases, available legal expertise is not effectively brought to bear until after committal for trial occurs, and committal proceedings do not provide anything approaching an effective screening procedure. The authors contend that many cases destined to fail in court can be identified in advance, thus sparing defendants the anxiety and social disruption of a court appearance. They also believe that the criminal justice system functions imperfectly because its organization, rules, and procedures are poorly designed and often give rise to injustice. According to their thesis, no significant reform measures can be advanced until some of the present systems' central features are abandoned: in particular, the ability of the police to decide the fate of suspects and the power of judges to strip formal protections of any meaning, to maneuver defendants into a position of compliance, and to persuade counsel to adopt norms of behavior that often bear little relation to legal prescriptions. Further, procedural protections need to be entrenched within the system, and the discretion to ignore or endorse breaches which the criminal courts are apt to exercise should be removed. An author and subject index, over 200 references, footnotes, and tables are provided.