Is there any british or australian lawyer pls help me in writing a topic?
I don’t know about the Australian system, but in English criminal law, there are circumstances under which defendants’ previous convictions are admissible – in essence where previous convictions are relevant in that they show a propensity to commit offences of a particular kind, or a propensity to lie. That aside the reasons for not generally allowing previous convictions to be admissible are these: 1. A jury at a criminal trial in the modern era is responsible for deciding whether the defendant is guilty of offence with which he is charged – not to decide whether he is a criminal or generally a bad person. 2. Most previous convictions will not be relevant to the issue of guilt, but will be prejudicial. Jurors are not perfect and hearing that a defendant has previous convictions will tend to prejudice them against him – make them assume that he is of a criminal nature, or feel that he is deserving of punishment generally – without giving them any evidence about the current offence. 3.
