Pre-verdict Judicial Fact-finding in Criminal Trials with Juries
* Professor of Law, University of East Anglia. Email: rosepattenden{at}rosepattenden.plus.com.
| Abstract |
|---|
In criminal trials with a jury, judges have many opportunities to engage in adjudicative fact-finding before the jury retires. English law has no conceptual framework for examining this judicial fact-finding which encompasses two categories of collateral fact (preliminary and underlying fact) and foreign law. A third category of collateral fact (conditional fact) is decided by the jury. The article examines the nature of judicial fact-finding and the history and rationale for this allocation of fact-finding responsibility between judge and jury.
This research has been made possible by an AHRC research award to study preliminary fact-finding by judges in criminal trials. My thanks to Prof. John D. Jackson for allowing me to read his LLM thesis, Finding Fact and Guilt in Criminal Trials which was submitted to the University of Wales, Cardiff in 1980.