ORDINANCE No. 7 OF 1857.
Evidence.
No. 7 of 1857.
An Ordinance for amending the Laws relating to Juries and Evidence.
[1st June, 1857,]
BE it enacted and ordained by His Excellency the Governor of Hongkong, with the advice of the Legislative Council thereof, in manner following, that is to say:
1. From and after the passing of this Ordinance, there are hereby extended to this Colony the twenty-second section of the Act of Parliament passed in the sixteenth year of Her present Majesty, chapter eighty-six, relating to the Court of Chancery; and also the whole of the Act of Parliament passed in the nineteenth year of Her Majesty, chapter forty-two, relating to oaths and notarial acts, except section four of the last mentioned Act: And also except so much of section five of the said last mentioned Act as doth not relate to the impounding or custody of documents, or the tendering in evidence documents with false or counterfeit seals or signatures thereto.
2. Any person tendering in evidence within this Colony any false affidavits, affirmation, or notarial acts within the meaning of section four of the said last mentioned Act, knowing the same to be false, shall, upon conviction thereof, suffer the penalties of perjury.
3. All documents whatsoever, legally and properly filed or recorded in any Foreign Court of Justice or Consulate, according to the Law and practice of such Court or Consulate, and all copies of such documents, shall be admissible in evidence within this Colony, upon being proved in like manner as any documents filed or recorded in any Foreign Court are proveable under this or any other Ordinance; and all documents whatsoever so filed or recorded in any Foreign Court or Consulate, and all copies of such documents, shall, when so proved and admitted, be holden as authentic and effectual for all purposes of evidence as the same would be holden in such Court or Consulate.
4. Whenever it shall appear to the satisfaction of the Supreme Court, or of the Court of Petty Sessions, that the person conducting a criminal prosecution on behalf of the Crown is merely, by reason of the illness or absence from the Colony of, or the impracticability of serving process on, a person whose deposition shall have been duly taken in the matter, before or on the committal of the prisoner to take his trial upon such prosecution, unable to produce the said person as a witness upon the said trial, then and in such case the said deposition may be read at the said trial as evidence against the said prisoner, if the said Court shall think fit. [Repealed by Ordinance No. 6 of 1854.]
5. A heathen witness, in any Court or before any person empowered to administer an oath, shall not be sworn either before or upon giving his testimony, unless the said Court or person shall think fit so to direct, in which case the said witness shall be sworn according to his conscience. But every heathen witness shall, before the taking
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Extends 15 & 16 Vict. c. 86, s. 22, and 18 & 19 Vict. c. 42, with certain exceptions, to this Colony.
False affidavits, affirmations and acts.
Foreign documents.
Depositions may be read at trial when the witness is absent, or too ill to be produced.
Heathen witnesses not to be sworn, but by order of the Court.