Alibi as a Defence in Criminal Law

Running head: CRIMINAL LAW
CRIMINAL LAW
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CRIMINAL LAW1
1. An alibi refers to a type of defence that is being used in the criminal trial by means of
which the accused person tries to prove that he was in a different place at the time when the
alleged offence was committed (Keinan, Kivetz & Netzer, 2016). In Latin ‘alibi’ means
somewhere else. In some of the legal jurisdictions, the requirement for adducing alibi as
valid evidence is that the accused must disclose the alibi defence before the trial has started.
However this is an exception to the rule that the criminal defendant cannot be normally
forced to provide information to the prosecution as the alibi allows evidence of innocence
instead of that of guilt. The privilege against self incrimination cannot be implicated in this
regard.
The alibi forms an essential part of every investigation. If the suspect can show that he
was not present at the scene of the crime then he can prove that he has not committed the
alleged offence, in such case he would be dismissed as the possible suspect. Alibi can be
asked in the form of the following questions like where the accused was when the offence
was committed, whether he was present in the city where the crime was committed,
whether he was present at a place away from the alleged location. All these questions were
generally asked by a police officer or the advocate who was interested to ascertain weather
he was the alleged offender.
Olsen and Wales in 2004 developed a theory called the taxonomy of alibi which involves
two supporting proof, the physical evidence as well as the person evidence. Physical
evidence levels together with person evidence combine to form 12 cells in in the theory of
taxonomy. The participants (n equals to 252) are asked for assuming the role of detectives
along with evaluating the alibis that wee representing the 12 cells. Trustworthiness of the
alibi usually followed the predicted pattern of the taxonomy. However where Physical

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evidence are present, it seeks to outdo to the person evidence more than what was expected.
Additionally, the evaluators of alibi are found not considering the possibility such that a
stranger who had corroborated an alibi might be mistaken
regarding the identity of the person. Trait inferences about the alibi providers seemed to be
following the same believability data even when those traits are not related to alibi
believability.
In this regard it may be discussed that the amount of alibi must be e generated to put
an innocent provider of alibi at-risk. There are mainly three causes which enumerate the
reason behind the failure of innocent provider of Alibi to supply an alibi that will be
convincing. They are the lack of memory, mistaken reports and the alibi that are
uncorroborated.
The first one is that the providers of alibi can lack memory regarding their
whereabouts. Secondly it can be discovered in the phase of evaluation that the provider of
alibi may have accidentally created a mistaken report of memory regarding his whereabouts.
The last also is in the validation phase where the alibi cannot be corroborated or is
exclusive.
In the legal system, the perception is that the alibis possess diagnostic value which
depends on assumption that relatively strong as well as accurate alibis can be produced by
the innocent people; else alibis will result into useless tools to distinguish the innocent
person from the guilty offenders. Three conditions have been identified due to which the
innocent providers of alibi may be at risk. Based on this, it is seen that the participants in
spite of being innocent will tend to fail reporting an alibi, reporting narratives and evidences