The Treatment and Admissibility of False Confessions - Dissertation Example

Download file to see previous pages The dissertation is offered in the spirit of the mosquito – there are a lot of them present, and the author seeks to be one of them, albeit probably the smallest one of them all. While this chance to provide my argument on the intriguing subject of false confessions, it is imperative to assert that this short dissertation cannot possibly do justice to all the valuable insights in the literature already surrounding the false confession issues; neither can it tie all the disparate and divergent strands neatly together.

II CONFESSIONS AND GUILT
A Terminology of Confessions
A ‘confession’ is defined as a written or oral statement that details the person’s admission to all the elements of having committed an offense, hence an acknowledgment of a person’s guilt. Distinguished from a confession, an ‘admission’ on the other hand refers to an acknowledgment of a fact that, if true, tends to prove guilt but which fails to possess the essential elements of a crime. As such, an admission falls short of a full confession. ‘Exculpatory statements’ are those statements made to the police that do not admit any element of the offense and can range from outright denial to alibi statements. This can also include non-incriminating statements.

Where there is no clear confession from the accused fully admitting to the elements of the crime, an accused’s statement could include both exculpatory statements and admissions. Generally speaking, because ‘Guilt is never to be doubted’, the prosecutor would attempt to inculpate the accused at trial by admitting admissions and exculpatory statements by the accused that may tend to incriminate a suspect in such a way that it shows they had committed the offense. Professor Pattenden describes the responses by the accused to police interrogations can be various, including ‘silence, denial, a full confession, admissions, mixed statements and the various possible kinds of “innocent” statements’. Therefore, for this paper, ‘confession’ is defined with a broader meaning such that it encompasses any statement made by the accused to which the prosecutor adduces into evidence, to show a consciousness of guilt in a particular case.

The prosecutor introduces admissions into court to either prove subsidiary facts leading to an inference of guilt or to make the accused out to be a liar. Prosecutors may want to introduce exculpatory statements into evidence as prior inconsistent statements to show that it is untrue and therefore the accused unintentionally incriminated himself or herself by the fact that he or she lied. Prosecutors may also want to admit such statements not as evidence of the truth but to impeach the accused if the accused chooses to testify on his or her behalf.
B Evidence of Guilt
Another way the prosecutor might attempt to inculpate the accused at trial is through the accused’s silence or bare denial. The accused’s silence and refusal to answer police questions may be used by the prosecutor to ‘strengthen the probative force and inferences from other prosecution evidence or, conversely, weaken the probative force and inferences from defense evidence’. ...Download file to see next pages Read More