The Criminal Justice Act 2003 (c.44) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It is a wide ranging measure introduced to modernise many areas of the criminal justice system in England and Wales and, to a lesser extent, in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
It amends the law relating to police powers, bail, disclosure, allocation of criminal offences, prosecution appeals, autrefois acquit ("double jeopardy"), hearsay, bad character evidence, sentencing and release on licence. It permits offences to be tried by a judge sitting alone without a jury in cases where there is a danger of jury-tampering. It also expands the circumstances in which defendants can be tried twice for the same offence (double jeopardy), when "new and compelling evidence" is introduced.
Read more about Criminal Justice Act 2003: Origins, Trials Without A Jury, Retrial For Serious Offences (the 'Double Jeopardy' Rule), Sentencing Reform
Famous quotes containing the words criminal justice, criminal, justice and/or act:
“Squeeze human nature into the straitjacket of criminal justice and crime will appear.”
—Karl Kraus (1874–1936)
“How many condemnations I have witnessed more criminal than the crime!”
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)
“You cannot do justice to the dead. When we talk about doing justice to the dead we are talking about retribution for the harm done to them. But retribution and justice are two different things.”
—William, Lord Shawcross (b. 1902)
“Idealism sees the world in God. It beholds the whole circle of persons and things, of actions and events, of country and religion, not as painfully accumulated, atom after atom, act after act, in an aged creeping Past, but as one vast picture, which God paints on the instant eternity, for the contemplation of the soul.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)