The law on Evidence
is really an interesting topic actually. There are all these concepts governing
the procedural aspects of evidence in court, like whether it is admissible. The
rule of thumb is that an evidence is relevant so long as it has probative value
to the issues at hand, but may be excluded if the judge deems that the
prejudicial effects of the evidence outweighs its probative force. So for
example, a person’s bad character would not be admissible because it would
prejudice the jury into assigning greater weight in their evaluation of the
accused’s guilt than what might have been so should the evidence not have been
admitted. But there are the catches. For example, prosecution is allowed to
adduce evidence of an accused’s bad character if the defence raises arguments
bolstering the defendant’s good character. The rationale is that the
prosecution should be allowed to attack the accused’s character if it is part
of the case of the defence that the accused’s good character makes it less
likely that he committed the crime.
I have some
thoughts about this. The first one is whether evidence in favour of the accused’s
good character should be admitted in the court of law in the first place. Isn’t
evidence of good character similarly prejudicial as evidence of bad character?
So let’s say, a person accused of committing a crime has a record of being a
good public citizen like participating in community works or things like that.
How does this exactly help the defence case that the accused has not committed
the crime in question? If it is going to be argued that it is less likely that
someone of upright reputation or standing in his community has less likelihood
of committing a crime, then why can’t it be similarly argued that someone of
bad reputation has a greater likelihood of committing a crime.
Perhaps the
rationale for allowing good character evidence in the first place is because it
has indeed great probative force in the defence case that the accused did not
commit the crime, whilst this does not apply so much to bad character evidence.
No one is totally all bad or good. But if he is generally good, he will not do
bad. While if there are some bad in a person, it does not mean that he is all
bad throughout.
But if this is
the case, then shouldn’t there be circumstances whereby a defendant should be
allowed to adduce evidence of his good character, without entire records of his
misdemeanor or mud-slinging allegations by any Tom, Dick, or Harry, to be
casted upon him? As the law is, once the defendant decides to present evidence
of his good character, the gloves are off, and either the prosecution or the
co-accused can impugn the accused’s character.
