"Stick to the facts pc miller" says the lawyer who then proceeds to pull a scenario without eveidence out of her hat.
lol why diden't the defendent object to completly evidenceless information being given to the jury?
she is the best there is is she? lol
Joe is/was the defendant.
Sharon Bishop is/was his lawyer - the defense lawyer.
Jocelyn Knight is/was the prosecutor representing the Crown. It's her job to present the evidence gathered against Joe to try and get him found guilty.
Knight's job is to prove the prosecution's case has holes in it, raising doubt that the right person was arrested. Within that, she can raise other scenarios to show how weak the prosecution is.
Unfortunately, the prosecutor cannot respond by disproving the defense's theories. It's unfair, but that's how it is.
In U S courts, defense attorneys cannot ask leading questions such as "When did you begin your affair with PI Hardy?" Also, attorneys cannot wildly speculate and use hearsay to prove their cases. The prosecutor should have objected every time the defense attorney opened her mouth. What's irritating about this show is the lack of police procedures for protecting and processing a crime scene. Also, the judge was incompetent in her rulings. She should have never allowed PI Miller to testify, or the judge should have allowed Miller to testify as a wife or a police officer--not both. As for using a family computer, for PC (Windows 7 through Windows 10 each family member would have their own sign in ID and password. Not foolproof but a forensic computer investigator could find a pattern of usage for each family member on the hard drive. Even when files are deleted on the hard drive, traces of the files are still there.
"No one forgets the truth, Frank, they just get better at lying."-Richard Yates🔍
But this isn't US TV. The writer, Chris Chibnall, claims he got advice from experts regarding British court cases and that they can do things like that there. When challenged on the leading question, Bishop cited the CCTV recordings from the hotel timestamping a late-night visit Ellie made to Hardy's room.
The bottom line is that Chibnall was showing how a seemingly slam-dunk case for the prosecution can be destroyed by a few mistakes on the part of Hardy, Ellie, the rest of the police and the townsfolk. He was also showing the audience that we shouldn't assume Hardy had done due diligence with the investigation in series 1 and that we should have paid closer attention. The story is as much about Hardy's fall from competence as a detective as it is about Joe Miller getting caught and convicted.
I wouldn't be surprised too if Chris Chibnall was also showing the flip side of how TV and movie court cases are typically portrayed. Usually there's someone fighting for justice who's cutting corners to get the suspect behind bars. The audience is rooting for that person to win and they ignore or choose to ignore any mistakes, figuring it all gets worked out in the end and justice is done. Instead, Broadchurch 2 showed us how cutting corners can come back to bite someone in the ass -- as it did Hardy -- and all the fall-out from mistakes like that.
P.S., Hardy is a Detective Inspector, that is, he's a D.I.
Yes, although US law is mostly derived from English common law, there are significant procedural differences.
There is a novel, Under a Ailent Moon by Elizabeth Haynes, which utilizes actual report forms that Brit law enforcement uses in investigations.
Rules of evidence and procedure are different in UK courts.
But leading questions are always asked in cross examination of the other parties' witnesses. You cannot ask leading questions in direct examination of your own witness, those must be open-ended except with a few exceptions if the court allows. That's in the US, no idea how it is in UK.