“Changing the Rules of Cross-Examination and Broadening Access to Justice”
Featuring Joyce Plotnikoff & Dr. Richard Woolfson
March 16, 2015 12-1pm
UCI Campus, Social & Behavioral Sciences Gateway Building, room 1517
**EVENT DETAILS: This event is free to attend and open to the public. No RSVP necessary. Light refreshments will be served.
Abstract:
English courts are developing what the Lord Chief Justice describes as a radical departure from traditional cross-examination where the witness is considered ‘vulnerable’ (i.e. aged under 18, or is an adult with a mental disorder, learning disability, physical disability or physical disorder). The new approach is underpinned by a new criminal justice role – the intermediary, a communication specialist whose skills match the needs of the vulnerable witness. Intermediaries include speech and language therapists, teachers, psychologists and other disciplines. Their objective is to ensure that witnesses understand questions and that their answers are understood. Based on their assessment of the witness’s communication abilities, they suggest ways to improve the quality of the witness’s evidence. They help police officers plan how to modify questions at investigative interviews and create communication aids to support questioning. At trial, they recommend how questions should be simplified and often recommend that leading questions be avoided. The role is regarded as contributing to the fairness of the trial. Judges use their inherent discretion to appoint intermediaries for vulnerable defendants, even though defendants not eligible through legislation.
Speaker Biography:
Joyce Plotnikoff and Richard Woolfson are directors of Lexicon Limited. Together they have produced numerous reports about the workings of the justice system in the UK and carry out judicial training in other jurisdictions. They evaluated the intermediary scheme when it was introduced in 2004 and have written a book to be published in July 2015 about the learning curve of its first decade. They are co-founders of The Advocate’s Gateway, the Advocacy Training Council’s website launched in 2013, responding to communication needs in the justice system. In 2013, they were shortlisted for a Halsbury Legal Award and Joyce received an Administration of Justice award from the US Supreme Court Fellows Association.
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