Don’t let women hide behind veils in court, says Britain’s top judge
WOMEN giving evidence in court should not be able to hide their faces behind religious veils, one of Britain’s most senior judges has suggested.
Supreme Court president Lady Hale said it is vital to see expressions and body language when judging whether someone is telling the truth – something she learned while presiding over a child abuse case.
The intervention from Lady Hale, head of the Supreme Court since last autumn, comes after more than two years since guidance was promised from the Lord Chief Justice on whether or not women in courts should be allowed to cover their faces for religious reasons.
She said in a speech to the Oxford Centre For Islamic Studies: ‘The ingredients of a fair trial should be the same for all, regardless of their religious or other beliefs. We do take it for granted in this country that observing a person’s facial expressions, body language and general demeanour are an important part of assessing their credibility.
‘And our adversarial trial system depends crucially on testing a witness’s evidence through cross-examination. I suspect that most advocates would find it difficult to imagine how one would cross-examine a witness whose face one could not see.’
She revealed she had learned how important it is to see the face of a witness giving evidence during a High Court child abuse case in the 1990s.
In the hearing, the wife of a doctor suspected of violence towards a baby was persuaded to removed her face covering when giving evidence, because all the lawyers were women. ‘This mother’s love for her children was quite apparent,’ Lady Hale said. ‘So too was the fact that, from time to time, she was repeating a rehearsed script.’
But she put a question mark over whether the face of a woman needed to be visible all the time while she is on trial.
She said: ‘A rather more difficult question is whether the magistrates, judge or jury should be able to observe a defendant’s demeanour throughout the trial. I would much have preferred to be able to watch the doctor’s wife’s reactions to what was being said throughout the proceedings. But I think I could weigh up the evidence without doing so.’
Equality guidance supplied to judges last week suggested when women remove a religious face covering to give evidence, there should be screens so only the judge and jurors can see them.