Eye-witness testimony and judicial studies.

Abstract

Practising barrister. Member of the Justice Sub-Committee on the Judiciary* This edition includes the papers presented at the third in the series of seminars for lawyers and other professionals involved in the crimi­ nal justice field which have been organized by the British Academy of Forensic Sciences and jointly sponsored by the Criminal Bar Associa­ tion and the London Criminal Courts Solici­ tors' Association. Chaired respectively by the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Justice Beldam and Lord Justice Kennedy, the seminars have at­ tracted audiences comprising a broad cross­ section of those concerned in making the system work or develop - including the crimi­ nal bar, solicitors in private practice, the police, the Crown Prosecution Service, The Home Of­ fice, the lay magistracy, academics, the Law Commission, and a comparatively small num­ ber of members of the permanent judiciary. Eye-witness testimony, the focus of the 1994 proceedings, was considered to be a subject of enormous potential interest to judges, since the treatment of witnesses between the time of an allegedly experienced incident and that when their evidence is presented in a court­ room is a subject which has hitherto been given scant analytical scientific attention but is obvi­ ously of crucial importance in criminal trials. It was fortunate, therefore, that the chairman of the Criminal Committee of the Judicial Stud­ ies Board acted as chairman and that the Academy had his assistance and that of the Circuit Judges' and Stipendiary Magistrates' professional bodies in publicizing the pro­ gramme extensively to full-time judges, including the High Court bench. However, it seems that those whose attendance might have been most beneficial to criminal justice, i.e. the judges themselves, were unique in being the only employed members of the audience whose registration fee had to be met out of their own pocket. An attempt, through the chairman, to cause this cost to be met from the Judicial Studies Board's budget was unsuccessful since it does not have the funds to subsidize in any way training events or conferences which it does not organize itself. Subsequent endeav­ ours, through the Lord Chancellor's private office, to locate reserves from other sources have borne meagre fruit: 'The view might be taken that, however valuable the seminar for a member of the judiciary, there were other even more deserving causes for the strictly limited funds available' (letter to the author from the Lord Chancellor's private secretary, 2 March 1995). This surely reflects poorly on the current thinking of those in a position to enable policy on judicial education to be changed and bodes ill for the future of the Royal Commission's recommendation that substantially more re­ sources need to be allocated to judicial training than at present.