The Identification Evidence Used by Mr Justice JA Lee - Case Study Example

Identification Evidence Name Institution Introduction Identification evidence is evidence used in the court whereby the suspect is claimed to have been see do the crime. This is where witnesses are used to identify the person through a parade, photos, videotapes, or through a word of mouth where the witness claims to have seen the person on the occasion of the crime or the accused used him or her to hand over the stolen goods. It is clear that, identification evidence is not highly reliable in a court of law because it might be biased from pressure exerted to the witness by other people. This paper critically explores the identification evidence used in the case of Harold Blackburn whereby the police officer relied upon Mr Thornthwaite’s hunch and the commissioner made charges from observations on identification evidence. The identification evidence gathered and relied upon by the Blackburn investigators when charging Harold Blackburn was not genuine. This is because Mr Thornthwaite’s hunch was just to target the suspect. It is noticeable that, the police had not yet gotten reliable evidence and that is why they just decided to rely on guesswork rather than carrying out full investigation to get a genuine evidence (Flowe, Mehta, & Ebbesen, 2011, 140). However, this evidence never relied on facts but intuitions. Mr. Justice claimed that, there was visual identification of the suspect and that is why he was arrested and charged in a court of law. Investigators to Mr. Harold Blackburn’s relied upon a poor evidence because they only took the identification evidence as the final evidence, but failed to investigate at the suspect’s premises or doing some forensic investigation to get a real evidence. It is widely realized that, identification evidence might be biased because individuals from the public might come out and claim that, they saw Mr. Harold Blackburn steal the claimed things, but it might not be true. According to Justice McHugh in the Australian case of Festa v R, there are different forms of identification evidence; that is, a witness claiming to had seen the accused in the respective occasion as per the charge, and when a witness claims to have been used by the accused to carry the stole things (McCartney, 2013, 71). Another form of identification evidence is whereby the accused is associated with some characteristics of the person known to have committed the criminal act. Mr Justice J.A.Lee, Royal Commissioner associated the evidence used to accuse Harold Blackburn with identification evidence. This might be because some witnesses came out and claimed to had seen the accused do the crime and this marks the admissibility of the specific evidence. There was no expert opinion that was involved in this case whereby admissibility of the evidence was not followed (Bergsmo, 2014, 305). According to the investigation done, there were no facts to prove that Harold Blackburn was involved in the crime because they did not involve an expert whose opinion could have been based on experience and knowledge. The investigators of this case might have made some assumptions in their opinion but fail to apply the necessary reasoning while making their conclusion about Harold Blackburn being the suspect. However, the opinion of the investigators seems to had not disclosed relevant reasoning, thus failure to try the possible facts. According to the argument put forth by Thompson, Kaasa and Peterson (2013, 372), assumption rule does not fit in proving the admissible evidence because it only relies on the opinion that fails to be accompanied with some critical reasoning. It is clear that, the court was only informed about the findings of the investigators, but never compared the subject matter of such evidence with the facts. According to the Australian law of evidence, truth is very necessary when making conclusion in order to regulate the entire admissibility of the respective evidence. Real evidence is required to prove the case, but this was not what happened in the case of Harold Blackburn (Roberts, & Zuckerman, 2010, 17). This is because the investigators only relied on hunch, but not facts when giving the findings to the commissioner who charged the suspect in the court of law. It is widely known that for all evidence given, the witnesses must do so on oath. Whenever a document is associated with a person in examination like in the case of Harold Blackburn, that document seems to have been made admissible through the given evidence (Julian, Kelty, Roux, Woodman, Robertson, Davey, & White, 2011, 224). The relevant evidence that accompanied this case had to be admissible because it is applied in identifying whether the victim is guilt or not, unless the rule of law fails to permit admission of relevance of the given evidence. The Royal Commissioner seemed to have relied on the identification evidence while charging the accused and this should not be the case. It is widely realized that, identification evidence contains a lot of hunch rather than facts and should not be relied upon when making charges against the suspect. There are genuine reasons from McHugh and Gummow JJ in Bulejcik v R from the Australian Case for not relying on identification evidence in making judgments (Bergsmo, 2014, 306). It s clear that, different witnesses might have different stories to tell regarding the same case, they might also be reacting in very different manner, and some witnesses might be confused (Robertson, 2012, 80). Ultimately, identification evidence is highly associated with the witness being influenced by other people from the public, maybe the people claiming to have their things being stolen. In this case, the Commissioner relied on identification evidence as the only evidence to make charges to Mr. Harold Blackburn and there was no genuine evidence from the investigators who only relied on Mr Thornthwaite’s hunch rather than looking for the facts associated with Blackburn’s issue. Reliability of the identification evidence used by the commissioner tends to be improved by some sections from the Evidence Act through imposition of specific procedures adopted during the process of identifying the suspect. According to Evidence Act, it is the responsibilities of police officers to use a number of steps to enhance them rely on identification evidence. There should be images used, tape records, a number of photos placed together and looking almost alike, and an identification parade (Keane, & McKeown, 2012, 32). It is very important for the police officers to follow the right procedure to take the identification evidence whereby the suspect is requested to participate in a parade and the witness is allowed to identify the person. In this case, the Blackburn’s investigators never used such procedures in identifying Harold Blackburn as the suspect, but the entire investigation was shallowly done. Identification parade as per the Evidence Act 25/1995 (NSW) could have served as a reliable rather than relying on hunch where the witnesses claim to have seen Harold Blackburn do the act with no facts of the evidence (Brewer, & Wells, 2011, 25). From the Evidence Act, a systematic procedure is followed in the identification parade and the witness is provided the required security and support to be able to identify the suspect without fear. Some invited witnesses could have identified Harold Blackburn in the court of law, but there was no chance of in-court identification. In reference to R v Le, the New South Wales Court of Criminal Appeal, it is very dangerous to undertake in-court identification when the defense counsel is not available to ask the victims questions for the witness to answer and meet the interests of the victims. It is apparent that, the Royal Commissioner relied on the hearsay evidence from the witnesses rather than having original evidence from investigation done by the Blackburn’s investigators. It is not clear if Mr. Harold Blackburn was at the location of the criminal incidence, because the police officers never got fact of him being the one who committed the crime. It is very clear that, the police officers had not gotten any evidence when they decided to rely upon Mr Thornthwaite’s hunch, but this was because they were targeting to accuse Harold Blackburn regardless the evidence (Robertson, 2012, 84). This shows that the judgment made by the Royal commissioner was not fair judgment because no investigation was done at the premises of the accused and the investigators never conducted some forensic investigation to gather more evidence. The Royal commissioner relied on hearsay, but if it was through law of evidence from the Evidence Act, 1995, there could have been a thorough investigation for identification of the accused. Conclusion In conclusion, the identification evidence used by Mr Justice J.A.Lee, Royal Commissioner in charging and arresting Harold Blackburn was not genuine and fairly investigated. It is evident that, the police officer relied upon Mr Thornthwaite’s hunch without following the facts of the case. Identification evidence could have been more reliable it is was accompanied with the Evidence Act, 1995, which could have improved the evidence from different formats of identification. There should be following of the right steps during identification of the suspect rather than applying guesswork to come up with some conclusions. References Flowe, H. D., Mehta, A., & Ebbesen, E. B. (2011). The role of eyewitness identification evidence in felony case dispositions. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 17(1), 140. Thompson, W. C., Kaasa, S. O., & Peterson, T. (2013). Do Jurors Give Appropriate Weight to Forensic Identification Evidence?. Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, 10(2), 359-397. McCartney, C. (2013). Forensic Identification Criminal Justice. Routledge. Julian, R. D., Kelty, S. F., Roux, C., Woodman, P., Robertson, J., Davey, A., ... & White, R. (2011). What is the value of forensic science? 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