Day 306 - 26 Nov 96 - Page 06
1 originals. This is again unsafe. Here is the witness
2 saying, clearly, he picked up everything he could, which we
3 would know, from all the other evidence, would have been a
4 wide range of literature and only, I think it was three
5 leaflets in the end were attached to his statement, but
6 they were not originals. So someone, at some stage,
7 decided which leaflets would be attached.
8
9 He could not remember anything else about that meeting,
10 apart from what he has in his notes. That is page 71, line
11 6.
12
13 I mean, at the end of the day, I am making some general
14 points there, not just general points in the abstract, but
15 I am showing how the unsafety of reliance on reports based
16 upon notes, based upon memory reviewed six years later in
17 the witness box, and the confusion over the leaflets, does
18 have a founding in the evidence that we have heard in the
19 case. So, although I am making a general point, I do not
20 have to make it each time. But the point I am saying is it
21 is not just a commonsense or a matter of law, although it
22 is both of those, the unsafety of what has happened in this
23 case, but also buried in the evidence of the transcripts of
24 the agents clearly reveals the unsafety of the process that
25 is taking place in this part of the case.
26
27 This should not take very long. He says on page 2 of day
28 264, line 41, he could not remember any actual words and
29 phrases that were used at the meeting. I put it to him:
30 "So were you recording your impressions plus specific
31 information that you gleaned? Answer: Yes, that would be
32 correct." He said the report, as far as he remembers, was
33 based upon his notes. So he is relying on a report which
34 may or may not have been based upon his notes, as far as he
35 remembers, six years later. He does not know. This is on
36 page 3, line 24: "But you do not remember if it is
37 identical to your notes? Answer: I do not know." He
38 says: "Parts of it are probably word for word, but that is
39 a guess." He did not type up the reports himself. He said
40 on that page he is relying on the report to refresh his
41 memory, so he is relying on a document which he did not
42 write to refresh his memory and that cannot be -- I do not
43 think that is lawful; I think that is inadmissible.
44
45 He says that the first statement written by the solicitors
46 was based upon this report, I asked him, "as far as you
47 know?" Answer: "Yes, yes, that would be so, yes." That is
48 all on page 3. When he signed the statement he did not
49 check it against the report. That is on page 3. So he is
50 signing a statement which, effectively, he could not
51 remember the details of. I do not see how he could have
52 verified the statements. That shows how unsafe this
53 process is, because he is verifying as true something that
54 he could not possibly know is true because he could not
55 remember and it was, in any case, based upon the
56 solicitors' own report that he did not write.
57
58 On page 4, between lines 18 and 28, he identifies the nine
59 people at the meeting that he says were at the meeting and
60 there is no indication of any members of the public being
