How accurate can the spontaneous statements made connected with the fact in issue be to render it admissible?

Statements made spontaneously by the victim to the witness can be made admissible in court. In the case of Ratten v R, Lord Wilberforce held that hearsay evidence may be admitted if the statement is made in the involvement of pressure as to exclude concoction and distortion. In that case, the call to police was made in being forced from deceased by an overwhelming pressure, thus it is made spontaneously. Based on that judgement, it can be sum up that, the statement made spontaneously can be admissible because there is no time or no room for the victim to fabricate, add in or change his statements. Plus, the statement was made contemporaneously after the incident. Apart from this, a case in Ireland, The People (Attorney General) v Crosbie., the court of appeal held that the words spoken by the victim were admissible although it was hearsay because it formed part of the criminal act for which the accused was tried. The Court further stated that the statement made by the victim was immediately after he had been stabbed by the defendant. In that case, the words spoken by the victim were spoken within one minute of the stabbing.

Question is, How accurate can those spontaneous statement be to render it admissible?

For instance, a person who was seriously injured after the stabbing uttered the words to another. In that circumstance, the state of mind of that injured person might not be as clear as when he was not injured. There are possibilities that his vision and judgment were not that accurate compare when he was not injured. After all, they are only human and human errors might occurred in that kind of tension situation. Another example is when Siti’s bag was snatched during the night where the street was dark. Subsequently, the Siti was seriously injured when her head was knocked against the concrete floor. Adam saw the person lying down right after she fell and she told Adam that “a guy who looks like Ali snatch my bag and push me”. In that dark street, Siti’s judgment might be wrong although her statement was made spontaneously. The identification of the real person who snatch Siti’s bag might not be right. If the court admit this evidence, it might bring injustice to Ali.

All and all, the requirements of the statement done must be spontaneous and contemporaneous which is connected to the fact in issue is something quite subjective and the court had to use its discretion very carefully to scrutinize the evidence.           

~Pinyin signs out~

What Court has to pay attention to before admitting a statement as part of Res Gestae?

Res Gestae has already been well explained by one of my learned friends in the previous post. Therefore, i shall go straight into answering the question posted above. Before admitting a statement as part of the res gestae, the Court has to address few issues first. They are the following:-

Firstly, the judge must post a question to himself: can the possibility of concoction or distortion be disregard?

To answer this question, the judge has to take into consideration the circumstances when that particular statement was made. In the midst of making the statement, the maker of the statement must be in the state of pressure. In this time of pressure, the possibility of concoction or distortion would be excluded. In addition to that, the event must be so unusual or overwhelming or dramatic as to dominate the thoughts of the maker so that his utterance was an instinctive reaction to that event and hence, giving no real opportunity for reasoned reflection.

The event must be made spontaneously. What is spontaneously? It means, it must be very closely associated with the event which has excited the statement that it can be fairly stated that the mind of the maker of the statement was still dominated by the event and there are no time for the maker to change or add in additions informations.

At the end of this part, the judge must be satisfied that the circumstances  were such that, having regard to the special features of malice, there was certainly no possibility of any distortion or concoction to the advantage of the maker as well as to the disadvantage of the accused.

Furthermore, the judge has to take into the account of any possibilities of error which might occurred when the maker of the statement made that particular statement. Human after all sometimes can made some mistakes due to few reasons. One of them is due to the sights. For instance, while making the statement, the maker actually suffered some eye problems and because of that his judgement might be inaccurate. 

Based on the above, it can be concluded that, although statement can be admitted as part of res gestae, this rule should be applied with care and it should always be applied strictly. This is to prevent any fabrications to the case; Seah FJ in Leong Hong Khie v PP.

~Pinyin signs out~ *stay tuned to the next interesting post by us!* :)