ABSTRACT
Of all the different types of evidence, a confession is perhaps the most compelling. The fact that the accused has admitted responsibility for an offence will be taken by many jurors as conclusive evidence of their guilt and for this reason the existence of a confession presents an enormous obstacle to the defence. 1 It would be a mistake, however, to assume that because a confession is made by the accused themselves it must be accepted as the truth. In many cases the accused confesses because they have committed an offence but in some cases there may be some other reason why the confession has been made. 2
As an out-of-court statement adduced to prove the truth of its contents, a confession is prima facie a hearsay statement. However, confessions are admissible under section 76(1) of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) as an exception to the hearsay rule. 3 This provision put on a statutory basis an exception long recognised by the common law, based on the supposed reliability of such statements. Put simply, it was thought unlikely that a suspect would confess to a crime that they had not committed. As Wills noted:
However, even though confession evidence is on the face of it admissible, considerations of fairness and/or reliability may make it undesirable to admit evidence of a particular confession, or other evidence on which the prosecution proposes to rely. There is a need to balance the desire to convict the guilty with the equally important need to ensure that an accused person is not convicted on evidence that is unreliable, or as a result of proceedings that have been conducted unfairly.
