Criminal evidence – Evidence of bad character. The Supreme Court, in answering a certified question from the Court of Appeal of Northern Ireland, namely, whether it was necessary for the prosecution relying on non-conviction bad character evidence on the issue of propensity to prove the allegations beyond a reasonable doubt before the jury could take them into account in determining whether the defendant was guilty or not, ruled that the proper question to be posed was whether the jury was satisfied to the criminal standard that a propensity had been established. That assessment depended on an overall consideration of the evidence available, not upon a segregated examination of each item of evidence in order to decide whether it had been proved beyond reasonable doubt.