New Evidence Or New Investigation

[Mickey80]

Advice on a scenario please (very simplistic):

Person A is charged with assaulting Person B and the case goes to court.

During the course of the trial, Person C makes a complaint to be police about a similar assault by Person A

Does Person C's evidence/complaint:

a) be included in the current trial as evidence of propensity against Person A

or

b) be excluded from the trail as it needs further investigating and could have an adverse effect on the current trial.

or

c) be included as evidence of propensity in the current and be further investigated by the police

Cheers

M

[Mickey80]

*ascertain not assertion

[Orderlimit]

"The last scenario mentions an admission/confession by the defendant to his therapist."

Mickey, this is a very odd scenario in relation to assault and doesn't seem to make sense at all.

If an investigator wanted to try and use such information then surely the therapist would be approached as a witness to provide a statement for assessment. I can't see how it could be looked at using BCE

[Mickey80]

I understand what you mean OrderLimit. I know it's extreme but I'm trying to cover all possible scenarios. I can imagine many skeletons come out of the closet when a person is arrested and/or charged. I trying to understand about fairness and unfairness of evidence, the difference between hard evidence and tittle-tattle.

In the last scenario, I was assuming that it would be the therapists duty on hearing about Person A's arrest to inform the police/courts, otherwise, how would investigators know that this possible evidence existed if they didn't know he was seeing a therapist.

I understand that fishing for evidence is illegal and must not be submitted if proven the evidence was gathered illegally.