Recorded Telephone Evidence

[worriedfather]

Can a person record a telephone call without concent and then submit this as evidence at Crown Court.

The case is for GBH.

[New Judge]

There is nothing to prevent either party to a telephone call from recording it provided it is for their own use. They do not have to inform the other party that they are doing so.

Difficulty sometimes arises when the recording is offered for evidence in court because it immediately places the recording beyond the “own use” specification. The admissibility of the recording as evidence will be considered by the magistrates (in the magistrates’ court) or the judge (in the Crown Court).

He or she will consider how it was obtained and what it contains. Generally, if it is being used to support something that a witness would provide in oral evidence (which I believe is the case here if the matter referred to is the same as your earlier question) then there would be no reason to disallow it.

[worriedfather]

Thanks for the answer.

My worries are 2 fold.

The call was recorded by putting the call onto loadspeaker, then using the recrding function from a mobile phone. This in turn was downloaded to a PC and then converted to CD. Seems to suggest too many conversions and possible tamperring.

My othe worry is the content. (And this is to do with the other question). I wanted to convince the other person to meet with myself to discuss the GBH allegation further. The other person actually came to our house to discuss this with me but I was out. He then continued the conversation with my wife and it turned into a major row, but he kept stating 'if you admit it I will not involve the Police'.

When I called him, I wanted to test his above comment. He kept asking me to admit the allegation, but instead of denying it, I just kept saying 'meet with me and I may be able to give you something'. I never admitted the allegation.

Not sure if the content of the call is being used as evidence or they are just using the call to imply harrassment from myself.

Personally I would want this dropped from the evidence, but then i would....