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

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