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FOOTNOTES
1 Scottish Executive. (2000).
Redressing the Balance: Cross-Examination in Rape and Sexual Offence Trials.http://www.scotland.gov.uk/consultations/justice/rtb-00.asp
2 The restrictions were initially introduced by the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1975 ss.141A/141B and 346A/346B, as inserted by the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Scotland) Act 1985 s.36 ('the 1985 Act') and were extended to additional sexual offences by the 1995 Act.
3 Scottish Executive. (2000).
Redressing the Balance: Cross-Examination in Rape and Sexual Offence Trials.http://www.scotland.gov.uk/consultations/justice/rtb-00.asp
4 Although prior to the 2002 Act the court had a common law duty to intervene to protect witnesses from inappropriate or intimidating cross-examination, there were concerns from some quarters that this power may not always be exercised vigorously enough to protect witnesses in sexual offence cases.
5 It was not possible to establish from this research, using data from written sources and listening to taped proceedings, whether evidence was agreed in advance in sexual offence trials. This would require a different research methodology than that agreed for this study.
6 The intention was to obtain and transcribe 90 High Court trial tapes (30 from each year). This did not prove possible in the time-frame of the research.
7 Rape and clandestine injury trials were selected for transcription as earlier research (Brown et al, 1992) looking at the use of sexual evidence in sexual offence trials found that instances of introducing sexual history or sexual character evidence without application were most likely to occur in cases involving these offences.
8 The application discussion lasted for one hour and thirty minutes in one case, and one hour and thirteen minutes in another.
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