Vassenor wrote:Atheris wrote:That's home-grown pure-bread whole-wheat fucking bullshit. Words can not describe how angry I am.
Oh that's fucking bullshit. All of this is FUCKING BULLSHIT.
This man seemingly did nothing wrong and they're letting a serial liar and someone who lied about rape and sexual abuse in the past get away with it?! That's horseshit. I expected better, Australia.
So you're mad that the defence has to use actual evidence to instill reasonable doubt rather than character assassination?
Evidence against a witness' credibility is pretty important in criminal trials, and is pretty fundamental to the right to cross-examination. Statutory rules governing similar-fact evidence, i.e., prior convictions and prior misconduct, vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and I'm not at all familiar with the specifics of NSW, but at common law it's generally inadmissible unless it can be shown to be relevant - and the standard of similarity required to establish relevance is often pretty severe - and even then, it only goes to the credibility of the witness' testimony, not towards the facts or law in issue. Evidence of prior false allegations is not evidence that the allegations in issue are false, but it it could be pretty important in gauging how reliable a witness' testimony is. In general, even if the relevance condition is met, a trial judge has discretion to prevent a jury from hearing similar fact evidence where she believes that the prejudicial effect of the evidence outweighs its probative value, which is almost certainly what would happen here in the absence of the legislation in issue - depending on the specific details, evidence of false allegations made as a child has a pretty limited probative value and a pretty major prejudicial effect. But excluding relevant similar-fact evidence against the credibility of a witness' testimony as a matter of course would be a huge mistake, because it can be pretty salient to a jury.
Introducing statutory bars on evidence regarding a witness' sexual history is great, a good way to curb arguments like "she's a bit of a hoe, she was probably out for it", which are just prejudicial, but barring the introduction of similar-evidence on on prior false allegations is pretty detrimental to the right to a fair trial and looks like an unanticipated product of poorly-drafted legislation, especially considering that that bar would only apply to sex abuse cases. Looks like Australian legal authorities agree, too.
