Day 172 - 12 Oct 95 - Page 56
1 passages, on page 10. Again, one is not sure whether this
2 is tendered as evidence of truth or merely as evidence of
3 McGee's motivation. The two things are not the same. But
4 I will leave that for the moment.
5
6 There is an obvious example on page 11, the girl with the
7 burn, in the second part. There is a sentence beginning,
8 about a quarter of the way down the paragraph: "This girl
9 was allowed to go home for the day that she suffered the
10 injury", and so on and so forth. "However, she was expected
11 to come back. She not given any time off and received no
12 sick pay. She was one of the people I approached." I do
13 not object to that, but I do object to the bit that I read
14 before, the reason being -----
15
16 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Which part, so that I can put brackets round
17 it?
18
19 MR. RAMPTON: From "this girl" down to "no sick pay" is
20 objectionable on the ordinary straightforward ground of
21 hearsay; and the reason I say that is that if one turns to
22 the second page of the supplementary statement,
23 continuation statement, right at the bottom -----
24
25 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Well, I do not want to be too pedantic about
26 it, but the "This girl was allowed to go home the day she
27 suffered the injury", that must be all right, must it not?
28
29 MR. RAMPTON: No, because he does not know it. Can I explain
30 why?
31
32 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes.
33
34 MR. RAMPTON: Bottom of page 2 of the supplementary, "Burns
35 (42)", he says, first of all: "I think this burn happened
36 January to February. Note" -- this is a note from the top
37 of page 3 -- "the black girl, I cannot remember her name
38 and I do not know the date. I did not see it happen. She
39 told me she did it on the chip basin." He can say he knew
40 the girl and saw the burn mark, but that is all he can say
41 about that.
42
43 Having said that, if the Defendants want to argue for the
44 admission of Mr. McGee's statement as evidence of truth of
45 what he has got in his statement, maybe that is something
46 one comes back to at the end the case. I do not know.
47
48 I do take the view that a good deal of it is admissible on
49 the ground that it explains what he did, which is one of
50 the exceptions to the rule.
51
52 MR. JUSTICE BELL: So what you are saying is that the parts which
53 you have put in brackets from "this girl" down to "sick
54 pay" ---
55
56 MR. RAMPTON: Yes.
57
58 MR. JUSTICE BELL: -- and from "five burns" at the foot of page 2
59 of the supplementary statement down to "chip basin" at the
60 top of page 3 are not admissible as evidence of the truth
