R. v. Poole, 2015 BCCA 464
[20] Using a criminal record to infer that a witness lacks credibility is precisely the sort of reasoning which the law permits. As Dickson C.J.C. states in R. v. Corbett, 1988 CanLII 80 (SCC), [1988] 1 S.C.R. 670 at 686, citing with approval a passage from State v. Duke, 123 A.2d 745 (N.H. 1956) at 756:
What a person is often determines whether he should be believed. When a defendant voluntarily testifies in a criminal case, he asks the jury to accept his word. No sufficient reason appears why the jury should not be informed what sort of person is asking them to take his word. In transactions of everyday life this is probably the first thing that they would wish to know. So it seems to us in a real sense that when a defendant goes onto a stand, “he takes his character with him . . . .” Lack of trustworthiness may be evinced by his abiding and repeated contempt for laws which he is legally and morally bound to obey, as in the case at bar, though the violations are not concerned solely with crimes involving “dishonesty and false statement.” [Emphasis added.]
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