The Treatment and Admissibility of False Confessions as Criminal Evidence - Thesis Example

Although wrongful convictions of innocent citizens based on false confessions seem like an anomaly, they are a reality within the criminal justice system.

Through a literature review of the existing discourse of the law about criminal evidence across Australia, the United Kingdom, and select American jurisdictions, this paper examines the legal issues surrounding false confessions in criminal trials. Drawing on multidisciplinary sources, including the work of legal professionals, psychologists, and criminologists, this dissertation explains the role of confession evidence in criminal trials and explores why innocent people would admit to a wrong that they have not committed. The dissertation then presents the results of some notorious cases in various jurisdictions, to highlight the flaws in the criminal justice system regarding false confession laws. The thesis then aims to identify practices and safeguards to stop the admission of false confessions into court. It concludes that although such tragic mistakes in the criminal justice system are unlikely to be obliterated, more research is needed in this area, to incorporate such safeguards and remedies that aim to reduce the number of wrongful convictions, into existing criminal evidence law, regardless of jurisdictions.

I would like to acknowledge Dr. Guy Hall for supervising me in the preparation of this paper and thank him for his guidance and support. I would also like to thank Ms, the staff of the School of Law, and my family and friends for their support and encouragement.

CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW

• Introduction

The novelist Joyce Cary once used the image of the mosquito as a stimulus to society:

“Progress isn't done by governments or spirits, but by chaps... What keeps it moving is not a big public shoving its little foot forward, but a little mosquito biting a big public behind. If you left the world to itself, it would die of fatty degeneration in about six weeks… But God, not intending to lose a valuable pedigree hog that way, has sent the mosquito to give it exercise, fever, and the fear of death”.

This 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.