Law of evidence Hearsay Rule in Civil and Criminal Proceedings



Law of evidence Hearsay Rule in Civil and Criminal Proceedings

Introduction

The law of evidence relating to hearsay refers to a testimony or proof that is given by the witness about a document generated or words spoken out of the court by any other person who does not come to a court as a witness and the testimony or the proof is presented to prove the truth about what is said declared in the document or the words involved.

A main principle in the law of evidence which was mainly formulated by the court's decision rather than the laws is that that in order to be permissible the evidence produced has to be relevant. Another important principle regarding the law of evidence is that the evidence that has been provided in the court is capable of being tested especially through cross examination. Hearsay evidence cannot be mostly tested by cross examination but the usually pass the relevance test. So a traditional approach often adopted in the law of evidence is that the hearsay is not acceptable in evidence.

Discussion

The courts and legislation have over the years developed a large number of exceptions that allow the hearsay to be admitted and treated in evidence because the main premise that follows is that not accepting all the hearsay would be unjust. For example the business records rule in Criminal Evidence Act of 1992 is acceptable hearsay. So under this act the records of framework numbers generated for a car by the car manufacturers can be used as proper evidence in case of a theft so that it can be proved that the car in question was stolen.

Hearsay Rule in Civil Proceedings

The hearsay rule and its related exceptions are of more significance and of practical importance to the proceedings in criminal cases as compared to proceedings in civil cases. The hearsay rule was very much abolished in United Kingdom in the civil proceedings under the Civil Evidence Act 1995. The section 1 of Evidence Act states that:

The evidence shall not be excluded in the civil proceedings on the basis that is hearsay.

The abolishment of the hearsay rule has some support and some opposition was also seen in the consultations to abolish the civil proceedings hearsay rule. Opposition mostly came from the judges on the management grounds. They said if the reliability concerns are kept aside relaxing the admittance of hearsay proof would only result in addition to the amount of evidence in the court which will consequently prolong the trial and thus increase the cost.

Section 2 of the 1995 Act deals with the reliability problems that can arise in the hearsay evidence. The court is then required to keep in view that the presented evidence has reliability issues of the evidence. So in simpler terms there is this huge question of reliability and weight of hearsay evidence in civil proceedings it is universally and mostly acceptable in civil ...