''R v Steyn'' (1954), an important case in
South African
criminal procedure
Criminal procedure is the adjudication process of the criminal law. While criminal procedure differs dramatically by jurisdiction, the process generally begins with a formal criminal charge with the person on trial either being free on bail or ...
, dealt with an application for leave to
appeal
In law, an appeal is the process in which cases are reviewed by a higher authority, where parties request a formal change to an official decision. Appeals function both as a process for error correction as well as a process of clarifying and ...
against a judgment of the High Court of
Southern Rhodesia, dismissing an appeal from a decision by a
magistrate, in which he convicted the applicant of the crime of theft as defined by the Stock and Produce Theft Repression Act.
The court held that the basic rule was that the police docket and contents thereof were privileged and the defense is not entitled to access to it.
Therefore, when statements were procured from
witnesses for the purpose that what they said would be given in evidence in a lawsuit that was contemplated, these statements were protected against disclosure until at least the conclusion of the proceedings, which would include any appeal or similar step after the decision in the court of first instance.
This protection against disclosure applied in both
civil
Civil may refer to:
*Civic virtue, or civility
*Civil action, or lawsuit
* Civil affairs
*Civil and political rights
*Civil disobedience
*Civil engineering
*Civil (journalism), a platform for independent journalism
*Civilian, someone not a membe ...
and
criminal
In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definitions of", in Can ...
trials.
There was, however, an ethical rule which obliged the
prosecutor
A prosecutor is a legal representative of the prosecution in states with either the common law adversarial system or the Civil law (legal system), civil law inquisitorial system. The prosecution is the legal party responsible for presenting the ...
to disclose if a witness deviated from his original statement.
Where there was a serious discrepancy between the proof of a Crown witness and what he said on
oath at the trial, the prosecutor must direct attention to that fact and, unless there was special and cogent reason to the contrary, make the statement available for
cross-examination.
This approach, which applied in South Africa before the advent of its new constitutional dispensation, has been described as "trial by ambush."
Notes
*R v Steyn 1954 (1)
SA 324 (A)
South African case law
1954 in South African law
1954 in case law
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