ABSTRACT
Confessions and Ill-Gotten Evidence 7 INTRODUCTION One of the most important of defence counsel’s objectives at trial is to ensure that as little of the prosecution evidence as possible reaches the jury – unless, of course, it happens to favour the defendant. This chapter deals with two important statutory weapons in the defence’s armoury: ss 76 and 78 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) 1984. These deal with confessions, and with a discretion to exclude for reasons of fairness evidence on which the prosecution proposes to rely. The sections are very often relied on in the alternative; it was decided in Mason (1988) that s 78 applies to confessions just as much as to any other evidence.
