QUESTIONS

Questions

Questions

PRIVILEGE

A: Testimonial Privileges in America

Exactly what behavior is covered by the Code varies enormously among police agencies. In some agencies, it may cover only relatively low-level misconduct; in others, it may cover corruption of even the most serious degree (Klockars, 2007). Moreover, the Code differs not only in the type of behavior it covers but also with respect to the people to whom the benefits of its coverage are extended. In some agencies, the Code is largely limited to police partners who enjoy, vis-à-vis one another, a testimonial immunity that police liken to traditionally privileged relationships between husband and wife, physician and patient, or attorney and client.



B: Necessity of Privileged Relationship

In other departments, the benefits of the Code may be extended to all police officers, even those employed by other agencies. Finally, both who and what the Code covers can vary substantially, not only between but also within police agencies (Klockars, 2007).

Some form of code of silence develops in virtually every group that finds itself vulnerable to discipline (e.g., criminals, students, soldiers, slaves, prisoners). The Code develops in every police agency at least in part as a response to the punitive orientation of the quasi-military police administrative system. Quasi-military police administration works, to the extent that it works, by creating hundreds and sometimes thousands of rules, and punishing deviations from those rules severely (Klockars, 2007). It is a sociological inevitability that under such administrative and organisational conditions, some form of the Code will evolve as a mechanism of worker self-protection.

LAY WITNESS

A: Lay witnesses are permitted to testify

Lay witnesses are people who perceive an event (by seeing, hearing, smelling, or other sensory perception) related to the trial (Lindsay, 2007). Character witnesses are people who testify in a trial on behalf of a person (usually a criminal defendant) as to that person's ethics and morality both by the personal knowledge of the witness and the person's reputation in the community. Such testimony is admissible (1) when the guilt of an accused party is doubtful and the character of the defendant is involved in the question; (2) to affect the damages in civil cases, where their amount depends on the character and conduct of any individual; and (3) to impeach or confirm the veracity of a witness. Finally, expert witnesses may testify when knowledge of a technical subject matter might be helpful to a judge or jury. People with special training or experience in technical fields are admitted as expert witnesses and are permitted to state their opinion concerning those technical matters, even though they were not present at the event (Lindsay, 2007).

B: Conditions for lay witness testimony to be admissible

To help the trial judge determine whether the scientific testimony is reliable and thus admissible under this standard, the Court provided trial judges with four nonexclusive factors with which the judges may assess scientific validity: (1) testability of the claims made by the expert, (2) error rate of the method of investigation, (3) peer review of the conclusions reached, and (4) their ...