Evidence of Bad Character in Criminal ... - Law Commission

admitted automatically even though we are right in thinking that the relevance of
such evidence is usually limited.
6.13 Option 1 involves placing all previous convictions before fact-finders regardless
of whether the previous offences had any similarity with those currently charged
and of how long ago those offences may have been committed. We should be very
surprised indeed were it to be supposed that a single offence of indecent assault,
committed twenty years previously could have any relevance to the question
whether a person had committed an offence of theft.
RELEVANCE TO THE DEFENDANT’S PROPENSITY TO LIE
6.14 One of the defendant’s propensities which may be in issue is his or her propensity
to lie. The current law assumes that a person’s character as a whole is relevant to
his or her general tendency to be truthful in a courtroom. In the light of our
interpretation of the psychological research, in the consultation paper we doubted
this. It does not appear to be generally true that a person who acts dishonestly in
one situation is likely to do so in another. A fortiori, misconduct which does not
involve dishonesty is unlikely to indicate a tendency to lie on oath. Conversely,
the more similar the circumstances, the more likely it is that the defendant will
act in the same way. We therefore provisionally concluded that
(1) the instances of previous misconduct most relevant to
credibility are convictions for perjury;
(2) convictions for dishonesty may be relevant in some
circumstances;
(3) behaviour not involving dishonesty is unlikely to be relevant
to credibility;
but we do not think it appropriate to prescribe in a statute which
kinds of conviction are and are not probative. 12
6.15 Most of the respondents who commented on this conclusion agreed with it,
though some thought that all convictions are relevant to credibility, while others
thought that they are rarely relevant in this way. In this connection the example
posed above is apposite. If the person had pleaded guilty to the single offence of
indecent assault of which he was convicted twenty years previously it would be
surprising in the extreme were that bare history to have any relevance whatsoever
to the question of his credibility when giving evidence denying a charge of theft
now.
6.16 In our view there is more to the issue whether a witness should be believed than
his or her general credibility – that is, the extent to which the witness is the sort of
person who can in general be trusted to tell the truth. Of far more significance is
what in the consultation paper we called the witness’s specific credibility – that is,
the extent to which, in the circumstances of the individual case, the witness
appears to have a reason to lie. Such reasons might include a grudge against the
12 Para 6.63.
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