Richard Samuel considers whether a power to hear pre-recorded direct evidence would help judges maintain high standards of justice
- Where civil judges consider it to be important to hear evidence-in-chief from a witnesses orally, they do so in court.
- Our criminal courts have developed ‘ABE’ learning which has resulted in pre-recorded evidence standing as evidence-in-chief.
- A small amendment to CPR 32 could give civil judges the option to view pre-recorded evidence-in-chief as part of their reading-in for trial when appropriate.
In some cases, oral evidence is more important than in others. In those cases, it is often the oral evidence of just one or two witnesses that really counts. In contract cases those witnesses will be the people who attended the meeting at which an agreement is said to have been concluded, but of which there is no written record. In tort cases it will be the child who witnessed the accident. In both a criminal case and a civil case brought in tort, it will be the evidence of a student who says she was sexually assaulted
