jury the case in which the evidence of identification is weak and uncorroborated by evidence of another kind. But it falls short of the recommendation of the Devlin Committee that the trial judge should be required by statute "to direct the jury that it is not safe to convict upon eye-witness evidence unless the circumstances of the identification are exceptional or the eye-witness evidence is supported by substantial evidence of another sort".
This means that there is still a large area of discretion which is not open to appeal and indications are reaching us that the guidelines are not being followed.
The reaction of the Home Office to the Devlin Report has been even more disappointing. New instructions for the conduct of identity parades and the showing of photographs have been drafted and issued for consultation, but with clear indications that they are not going to be given statutory force. Unless they are, they can be ignored with impunity. There seems to be a curious belief on the part of the administration that administrative guidelines have the force of law. There has been no hint of legislation to proscribe dock identifications or to require the prosecution to give to the defence all descriptions given by witnesses, as recommended by the Devlin Committee. We have recently obtained leave to appeal in a case where the prosecution did not disclose the first description of her assailant given by a victim of rape. This was wholly different from that of the man who was afterwards charged and convicted. What is even more disturbing, the police refused to allow the prosecuting solicitor to Supply JUSTICE with a copy of the statement for the purposes of the appeal.
In the lifetime of JUSTICE there have been two previous outcries about wrong convictions in identification cases. They have both been allowed to subside without any effective new safeguards being introduced. It is now three years since the cases of Luke Dougherty and Laszlo Virag hit the headlines and over a year since the Devlin Committee reported. It will be tragic if the lesson of these cases and many others has still not been learned.
Notice of Alibi
One of the matters dealt with at some length in the Devlin Report was the responsibility for interviewing alibi witnesses. JUSTICE had specifically drawn the attention of the Devlin Committee to the failure of the police always to observe the undertaking, given when the Notice of Alibi provision was enacted, that the police would not interview alibi witnesses without giving the defence solicitor an opportunity to be present. The Committee accepted our view that it was desirable that this undertaking should be strictly observed.
Our Secretary made a number of enquiries and discovered that not only police officers, but some judges, counsel and prosecuting solicitors were unaware of this undertaking and regarded it as normal for the police proceed to interview witnesses as soon as the notice was received. Our Chairman then enquired of the Home Secretary whether these instructions had been renewed since they were sent out in 1967 and was told that they had not. The Home Secretary expressed the view that
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