Clause 84 - Defendant's bad character
Criminal Justice Bill
3:30 pm
Mr Humfrey Malins (Woking, Conservative)
I respect the question, but what is a false impression? I believe that a man or a woman who stands before a court never having been convicted of a criminal offence is a person of good character. That has been the judicial situation for hundreds of years. The directions issued by the Judicial Studies Board on what is to be said to the jury have not been dreamt up over night; they have been laid out over a long time and represent a great tradition in our law. I believe that a person should be able to say, ''Yes, I am of good character'', and not have it thrown back at him that he has done something wrong. It is not fair to give civil penalties the same status as criminal convictions. The defendant should not be subject to the vagaries of being charged in contradiction to his assertion that he is a man of good character with no convictions but, in contradiction to that, be charged with behaving in a way that might be viewed with disapproval by a reasonable person.