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ID Parades - Know your Forbes from your Popats

by Michael Oliver

In the normal run of cases an offence is committed and the victim gives a description of the offender. When a suspect is caught the victim, where identification is disputed, tries to identify the offender from a line-up.

The situation addressed by the Popat cases was what to do where the victim identifies the offender, whether by chance or by taking an observation trip in the area, before there is any chance to hold an ID parade. The Popat cases held that where there had been a complete identification in such circumstances there was no need to hold a subsequent parade.

Laws LJ distinguished Forbes on somewhat thin grounds in the Court of Appeal and held that in such circumstances the obligation to hold a parade was mandatory because of the clear wording of Code D to that effect. Code D, of course, distinguishes between cases where the suspect is, as in this situation, known, and where the suspect is not known.

The House of Lords upheld the Court of Appeal's decision in Forbes. Even then there are common sense exceptions to the mandatoriness of the Code, as for example where the victim would be unable to identify the offender or would be able to identify only his clothing, or where the case is one of pure recognition.

2 recent authorities shed further light on identification. In R v Chan (Siao Bing) [Unrep, 21/3/01, 9904909/Z3] it was held that there was no requirement to hold an ID parade where the purpose was not to identify whether a person was present but what role he performed in the alleged crime.

Of course the get-out clause for the court in any case of a breach of Code D is to rule that there would be no unfairness under section 78/Article 6, as happened in the case of Forbes. In a different identification context this is what happened in R v Loveridge [CA, The Times 3 May 2001] where the court held that there was no unfairness to admit video evidence of the appearance of the defendants to enable a comparison with CCTV evidence from the scene of the crime so that a facial mapping expert could compare the two, even though the former was obtained unlawfully from secret surveillance in their cell in breach of section 41 of the CJA 1925 which prohibits photography & video filming in court.

29 January 2002

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