The children\u2019s legislation permits evidence of children to be pre-recorded and given in place of testimony at trial.\u00a0 Recorded interviews of a complainant under 14 and member of Garda Siochana is admissible, provided this is subject to the ordinary rules of relevance and admissibility and the complainant is available for cross-examination.\u00a0 The provision is applicable only to indictable offences.<\/p>\n
A child witness may be cross examined by television link, and he may use an intermediary.\u00a0 The recording may be edited with the \u00a0consent of the accused and leave of the court. The court may deny the admissibility of the recording in the interest of justice, having regard to the risk that its admission would result in unfairness to the accused.<\/p>\n
Notice must be given of the intention to use \u00a0the videotape interview.\u00a0 The accused must be given a reasonable opportunity to view the recording. The requirement applies only to evidence to be used at trial.\u00a0 It is likely that any inconsistent interviews, which tend to assist the accused\u2019s case have to be disclosed under general principles. The duty \u00a0applies not only to witnesses, but to persons no longer intended to be called as witnesses.\u00a0 The accused may then summons the person concerned as a witness.<\/p>\n
In deciding whether to admit a live link or a recording of evidence received in the event of a trial, to admit an interview, the trial judge must consider whether it is in the interest of justice to do so. Even subject to the above conditions, the judge retains a broad discretion to exclude evidence or ensure that it is only admissible where it is consistent with the interest of justice and the constitutional requirements of fairness and due process.<\/p>\n\n
\n <\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Oral Trial the Norm The rules of court provide that in the absence of an agreement to the contrary, the general rule is that witnesses in court proceedings, are to give evidence court orally. The courts place a high value on the trial with verbal testimony and cross-examination, which gives the court (or jury) the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[317],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4529"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4529\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}