There is a high attrition rates in domestic violence against women cases, meaning that several cases drop out of the criminal justice system at various stages. To ensure a strong case in court the procurator must consider the evidence which has to hold its merit regardless of the difficulties in gathering evidence, given the dynamics and complexities of domestic violence. Sweden was one of the first countries to criminalize domestic violence aimed towards women. The structure of the offence is also unique in that it involves several separate criminalized acts being assessed together as a single entity. Yet there has been a decline in both number of reported intimate partner violence offences and the number of convictions in cases of gross violation of a woman’s integrity. According to a report from the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, the decline was neither due to a reduction in actual levels of intimate partner violence nor a change in reporting propensities for intimate partner violence among women. The possible contributory explanations given in the report was that the declining, in the reported and cleared offences, was linked to a trend towards a more rigorous evidentiary requirements in court. Theories from juridical doctrine suggested that this can be explained by how case law from the Supreme Court has been in interpreted by the lower courts. Following a statement by the Supreme Court in NJA 2005 p. 712, there has been several interpretations in juridical doctrine, some which state that a plaintiff’s statement in court is no longer sufficient on its own for it must have corroborative evidence to reach the evidentiary requirement. Later caselaw such as NJA 2009 s.447 I & II and NJA 2017 s.316 has been suggested to mean that not only is there a requirement of corroborating evidence, but also a demand of higher prevalence of corroborating evidence to support the victim’s narrative in court. If true, it would impose a threat to legal principles and the free evaluation of evidence. Thus, the purpose of the thesis was to investigate whether there was a higher requirement for corroborative evidence for cases of gross violation of women's rights in current law, in its actual sense and study how a higher prerequisite can affect the judge's evaluation of evidence. This study found that there was a trend towards safer prosecutions as the conviction rate for prosecuted offences, in relation to cases that ends up in court, has increased over time. Also, the number of corroborating evidence in the indictment has increased over the years. This was interpreted as being the result of an adaption to increased requirements for corroborating evidence in cases of gross violation of a woman’s integrity. However, there was also findings that suggest that the term corroborative evidence lacks a collective definition and appears to be uncertain at best. In addition, there was a lack of thoroughness in the opinion of the verdicts rendering it difficult to verify whether the legal assessor had in fact been objective and rational in the evaluation of evidence. Although there was no discovery of a general requirement of corroborative evidence in the District Courts, the study found that some individual judges would render a plaintiff's statement not sufficient if there was no further corroborative evidence to support the statement. There are undoubtedly several reasons why a higher requirement for corroborative evidence has arisen. One reason was how the District Courts and prosecutors have interpreted the ruling of NJA 2009 s.447 I & II and NJA 2017 s.316 Supreme Court´s case law. The other is a conceptual confusion on how to rule a plaintiff to be credible and reliable is causing a problem in how the evidence is being structured and evaluated. To provide a more objective and rational evaluation of evidence, the Supreme court ought to make new case law defining the meaning of corroborative evidence. Otherwise, basic legal principles are of risk to be diminished.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:su-210388 |
| Date | January 2022 |
| Creators | Tesfamichael, Sara |
| Publisher | Stockholms universitet, Juridiska institutionen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
Page generated in 0.0022 seconds