ABSTRACT
You may think a confession would be easy to spot: ‘OK guv; it’s a fair cop. You’ve got me bang to rights.’ Perhaps in real life that sort of thing is said more often than we might expect. But because examiners are interested in grey areas, you are not likely to have to deal with anything so simple in the examination. Your starting point is the partial definition contained in s 82(1) of PACE. With that in mind, you must interpret what has been said. Remember that a favourite topic for questions is the extent to which an accused person can, by something other than an oral statement, adopt an allegation against him. Consider some possibilities: he begins to weep; he hangs his head; he blushes violently; he runs away; he says nothing; he attacks the accuser. For a vivid example, see Batt (1995). Impact on the case as a whole The obvious impact is that of something said by an accused person which inculpates the maker of the statement in relation to the offence in question. But remember to make the point, where appropriate, that an inculpatory statement made by one accused about another outside court, and not in the presence of the co-accused,2 will not be evidence against the co-accused,3 and will be admissible only to the extent that it also implicates the person who makes the statement.4
