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Law: new material (8)

01 December 1994

Review Right of silence debate: the Northern Ireland experience, Justice May 1994. 44pp. The first systematic study of the effect of the abolition of the right to silence in the north of Ireland has shown that abolition does nothing for rates of charge and conviction, particularly in serious and terrorist cases, but has severe consequences for fair trials and the presumption of innocence which grow over time.

The report, jointly prepared by Justice and the Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ), points out first that the parliamentary debate on the abolition of the right to silence in Britain was uninformed as to whether the provisions as operated in Northern Ireland had the desired effects in terms of putting more "hardened criminals" who currently "abuse the system" behind bars. Research begun by the Northern Ireland Office in 1990 on the operation of the Criminal Evidence (Northern Ireland) Order 1988 was never apparently completed and its findings never released in full. Only some broad conclusions were released in March 1994 in response to a leak of the research.

In a series of detailed case studies the report shows how the judges in Northern Ireland have become more and more inclined to fill gaps in the prosecution evidence by recourse to inferences drawn from the accused's silence. Thus it concludes silence has become evidence of guilt and the presumption of innocence has been undermined.