Where a charge of s.18 Offences Against the Person Act 1861 had been brought, it was standard practice in cases where the incident had occurred in a nightclub and people were drunk to leave a s.20 alternative to the jury. Where there was no legal basis for allowing a crime report to be put into evidence, the only way of adducing the evidence in the report would be for counsel to ask the officer in question if that statement had been made to him.

CA (Crim Div) (Tuckey LJ, Sachs J, Judge Rant QC)

18/11/1999