"I come now, members of the jury, to speak to you about identification. Mr Campbell, the manager of the Roebuck Caravan Park, told you among other things that after the accused Collard had been charged by the police they had a conversation. I think it was the second conversation that he spoke about. He said in the course of that conversation Collard told him, "I was there but I didn't do it". Mr Campbell told you that conversation continued. He suggested to the accused Collard that he should dob in the bloke who did stab the other man. The accused Collard said, "I can't because it's family. I can't, my brother's got kids."
Now, it's a matter for you as to what you make of that. If you accept Mr Campbell's evidence - and of course that has been challenged, but if you accept Mr Campbell's evidence that that conversation took place, what does it mean? Was the accused man telling Mr Campbell that he was actually inside the house but that he didn't do the stabbing or was he saying something else? Did he go on to say that it was not he who stabbed Mr Collings but it was his brother, "brother" used in the strict term of someone having common parents or is it "brother" in the more extended term that sometimes the word is used. "I can't dob him in because it's family. My brother's got kids." Was he saying then that it was his brother who did the stabbing?
I mention that because you may think that there's a possibility of some likeness between the two which would have some bearing, perhaps, on identification. This is a matter of comment and only for you. Now, save for the evidence of Mr Collings, there is no other evidence, as far as I understand it, against Collard tending to show that he was at the house that night. So save for the evidence of Mr Collings who said it was Collard who stabbed him, save for the evidence of Mr Campbell who said that Collard told him he was there, it appears that there is no evidence against Collard tending to show that he was at the house last night. So that is why the evidence of those two men is so important.
Mr Collings said in effect, of course, Collard was not only there but he was the man who stabbed him. Campbell's evidence can't go that far. In fact if you accept that Collard did say what Mr Campbell said, Collard was saying, "I didn't stab him, my brother did", if that is the interpretation that you put on those words. So in the case of Collard the evidence of identification is important. It tends to show not only that he was there but also that he was the principal offender or a principal offender as I have used that term.
Now, members of the jury, you probably all appreciate that sometimes miscarriages of justice occur. When they do occur faulty identification is a major source of error and so there is a special need for caution on the part of juries or any other judicial officer before convicting a person in reliance upon identification. You must be careful, and there's a particular danger about identification. A mistaken person can be - a mistaken witness, put it that way, can be a convincing witness. Honest people can make mistakes. Honest people can be convincing but they can be mistaken.
So it's necessary to examine closely the circumstances surrounding the identification. Look first at what happened on the night in question. What opportunity did Mr Collings have to see the person that he later was asked - or later tried to identify. In considering that opportunity you might ask yourself, "How long did he have the man with the knife under his observation". Counsel have talked about that. Probably you will appreciate that there are very few of us who really are good at estimating time, how long it takes for certain things to happen. Sitting in a doctor's surgery time seems very slow. Sitting in a jury box sometimes you may think time passes very slowly, but when you're involved in something time passes very quickly, although not always. So you probably need to look with some scepticism as to estimates of time, particularly in relation to the time during which Mr Collings had the opportunity to look at the man in front of him.
Ask yourselves, "How close was the other man to him?" He must have been pretty close because he stabbed him. There was talk of a metre and it would seem that the other man was close to him for some time before the stabbing took place and after the stabbing took place, although that time, before and after, might well have been a fairly short time. What was the lighting? I don't recall any specific evidence as to what lights were on, but of course, Mr Collings told you that he was working on his computer or he was using his computer, in any event, and it seems that there was no difficulty in seeing that there were people there. Precisely how good the lighting was I can't remember from the evidence, but perhaps you can.
Another feature that you would need to take into account is this, that Mr Collings, as far as he was aware, it seems, had not seen the stabber before, so it was not a case of recognition of a friend, a relative or an acquaintance, or even someone who was known. It was truly a case of seeing someone who was apparently a stranger. Even when we think we recognise a friend or a relative sometimes we make mistakes. We go up in the street to speak to someone that you think you know and either before or after you start talking you realise it's not the same person at all, and the danger of identification of course is - or false identification is greater when the person is a stranger.
It's appropriate that you take into account the length of time that followed the event and the time when he spoke to the police officers. It seems that in this case he spoke to the police officers and gave a description of the man fairly soon after, because the photoboard was put together and presented to him I think six days after the event and he told the police about it, of course, long before then.
It's appropriate that you should consider any discrepancy between his description to the police officers of the man he saw and of the man in the photograph or indeed the accused in the dock. You will recall that Mr Collings agreed that he told the police officers that the man who stabbed him had short dark hair - presumably hair on his head. He had no facial hair. He had a jumper around his head which covered the point of his chin. The photograph which he identified as being a photograph of his attacker was of a man with a moustache and partial beard.
Mr Allanson [defence counsel] put to you also some of the difficulties with which a person identifying - or which Mr Collings would have had in identifying the person who attacked him. A number of significant features of the man were covered up - his ears, the point of his chin, all except apparently the facial features, and so Mr Collings did not have the benefit of seeing the entire head of the man. In this case the identification was made from a board of 12 photographs which is one of the exhibits. Now, identification from photographs has its limitations. Photographs usually, at least, are two dimensional only. Photographs are taken from a particular angle, in this case full face, but as Mr Allanson put to you, a face looks different from different angles and it might be that the angle of the face in the photograph was different from the angle of the face of the man when he was in front of Mr Collings.
Another problem about identification from the photoboard when that identification is made, as in this case, in the absence of the accused, is that there's no independent person there at the time who can draw attention to deficiencies in the process of identification. Mr Collard was not there so he's unable to put his version of what actually occurred when the identification was made. The only persons were, I think, the two detectives, Detective Black, Detective Prosser and Mr Collings himself. Then it is appropriate that you take into account what actually took place when the photo was selected by Mr Collings.
He had in front of him 12 photographs, each of men with darker coloured skin, each with a beard and a moustache, whereas he had thought, he told you, that the man in front of him had no facial hair. Was that really unfair to Mr Collard, the accused man Collard, or was it appropriate, because the detective told you that the only photograph available of the accused Collard showed him with a moustache and with a beard and so it was appropriate that the other photographs should have men wearing a moustache and a beard, otherwise, I suppose, the implication is that he would have stood out if the others had no facial hair. In any event, it's appropriate that you take into account the various comments that are made. If you find them helpful, well and good, if not, you use your own judgment.
Then there's some discrepancy, you may think, between the evidence of the police officers as to how long the identification took, some discrepancy between what was in the statement of each and what each of them said to you. In the statement each apparently said the time taken by Mr Collings to select the photograph was three to three and a half minutes, whereas the time at which they spoke in evidence was rather different, looking at the photographs first of all for a minute or a minute and a half and then saying, "Well, the man I saw had no facial hair", one of the detectives saying, "Look for the facial features" and then a further minute or a minute and a half before the selection was made. Now, is there anything significant about the difference in time? Does it tell you anything about the reliability of the evidence of the detectives or is it simply something that doesn't help you one way or the other? Matters for you, members of the jury.
It is true, of course, that Mr Collings identified the accused man Collard while he was in the dock. I think he was asked, "Is he the man?" and he pointed to him and that dock identification, as you appreciate, cannot be regarded as a great weight. One would clearly know from the witness box that the two men sitting in the dock are those two charged with the offence. Mr Collings had previously selected a photograph which he said was the photograph of his attacker and although photographs have their limitations, one would expect that the accused man Collard was not very different from the person in the photograph at least.
So dock identification might rule out an obvious error where the man in the dock had no resemblance whatsoever to either the man in the photograph or the man at the scene, but save for that you may think that dock identification is worth very little. That's all I propose to say about identification generally. Remember the warning that I have given, especially because identification is so important in relation to the accused man Collard for the reasons that I have mentioned."