Maher v Director of Public Prosecutions

Multiple hearsay must be analysed in stages, testing each link in the chain against the statutory gateways. A business document is not admissible under section 117 where information supplied by a witness passed through a person who did not receive it in the course of an occupation or office. Nevertheless, the evidence may be admitted under the interests of justice provisions in sections 114(1)(d) and 121(1)(c), applying the statutory factors cumulatively. An appellate court may uphold the admission of evidence on the correct statutory basis where the lower court would inevitably have exercised its discretion in the same way.

The claimant was convicted by magistrates of careless driving and failing to stop and report an accident after her vehicle was identified as having collided with another car. The prosecution relied on a Police Incident Log recording the registration number supplied after an eyewitness noted it and another person telephoned the police.

The magistrates admitted the log under section 117 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003. The claimant argued that the log contained inadmissible multiple hearsay. The central issues were whether section 117 applied and, if not, whether the evidence was admissible through the interests of justice gateways.

1. Appeal dismissed. The question whether the Police Incident Log was admissible under section 117 was answered in the negative, but the convictions stood because the evidence was admissible under the interests of justice provisions.
2. Multiple hearsay should be analysed sequentially. Here, the material information passed from the eyewitness, through the person who found the note and telephoned the police, to the police clerk who recorded it.
3. For section 117(2)(b), the relevant person was the eyewitness who supplied the information contained in the log. She had personal knowledge of the registration number. However, section 117(2)(c) was not satisfied because the intermediary who received the information from the eyewitness did not do so in the course of a trade, business, profession, occupation or office.
4. The evidence could not proceed through sections 119 or 120. There was no agreement under section 121(1)(b). The evidence was nevertheless admissible under section 121(1)(c), read cumulatively with the factors in section 114(2). The identification was highly reliable in context, particularly given the claimant’s admissions that she and the matching vehicle were present at the material time.
5. The magistrates had approached admissibility under the wrong statutory gateway. Their findings showed that they would inevitably have admitted the evidence under the correct provisions. Mr Justice Leveson agreed that the evidence would have been admissible under sections 114(1)(c) and 121(1)(c).

The judgment concerned an appeal by way of stated case from convictions imposed by magistrates. No citation for the magistrates’ decision was stated.

• High Court (Administrative Court): the appeal was dismissed. The court answered the stated question on section 117 in the negative but upheld the convictions because the evidence was admissible under other statutory provisions.