R v Andrews

Ratio Decidendi

Facts

The victim was attacked and stabbed in his flat. Within minutes, and while seriously wounded, he made his way downstairs and told two police officers who arrived at the scene the names of the men who had attacked and robbed him. He died some weeks later. At the trial of Andrews, the prosecution sought to rely on the dying man's identification of his attackers, and the question was whether that statement was admissible notwithstanding the rule against hearsay.

Judgment Summary

The House of Lords held that the victim's statement was admissible as part of the res gestae. Lord Ackner, giving the leading speech, set out the governing test for such spontaneous statements: the trial judge must be satisfied that the event was so unusual or startling as to dominate the maker's thoughts, so that the statement was an instinctive reaction to it giving no real opportunity for reasoned reflection; the statement must have been made in conditions of approximate contemporaneity with the event; and the primary question is whether the possibility of concoction or distortion can be safely disregarded. Ordinary fallibility of the witness — for example the effects of drink or a fleeting observation — goes to the weight of the evidence, not its admissibility. Because the identification here was made spontaneously, minutes after the attack, while the victim's mind was still dominated by it, concoction could be excluded and the evidence was admissible. R v Andrews remains the leading authority on the res gestae exception, now overlaid by the statutory hearsay scheme in the Criminal Justice Act 2003.

Key Quotes

Subsequent Treatment