Computer Generated Evidence in Court :: Computers Technology Courtroom Essays

Computer Generated Evidence in royal courtIntroductionWe be living in what is usually described as an information society and asthe business community moulds ever greater use of computers the courts ar goingto find that increasingly the disputes before them turn on tell apart which has atsome stage passed through or been processed by a computer. In order to keep instep with this radiation diagram it is vital that the courts are able to take account ofsuch rise. As the Criminal Law Revision Committee recognised, theincreasing use of computers by the Post Office, local authorities, banks andbusiness firms to store information will make it more difficult to prove certainmatters such as baulk card frauds, unless it is possible for this to be donefrom computers (CLRC 1972, para 259).AdmissibilityThe honor of grounds is concerned with the means of proving the facts which arein fill in and this necessarily involves the adduction of evidence which is thenpresented to the court. Th e law admits evidence only if it complies with therules governing admissibility. Computer outturn is only admissible in evidencewhere special conditions are satisfied. These conditions are set out in detailin section 69 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) 1984 (see furtherNyssens 1993, Reed 1993 and tapper 1993).In general the principles of admissibility are that the evidence must be applicable to the proof of a fact in issue, to the credibility of a attester or tothe reliability of other evidence, and the evidence must not be inadmissible byvirtue of some particular rule of law (Keane 1994, pp 15-20 Tapper 1990, pp 51-61).Real evidence usually takes the form of some temporal object (including computeroutput) produced for inspection in order that the court may draw an inferencefrom its own observation as to the existence, condition or value of the objectin motion. Although real evidence may be extremely valuable as a means ofproof, little if every weight attaches to it unless accompanied by testimony whichidentifies the object in question and explains its connection with, orsignificance in relation to, the facts in issue or relevant to the issue.This is illustrated in the case of R v forest (1982) 76 Cr App R 23 where theappellant was convicted of handling stolen surfaces. In order to prove that metalfound in his possession and metal retained from the stolen consignment had thesame chemical composition cross-checking was undertaken and the figures producedwere subjected to a weighty mathematical process in order that the percentage