ABSTRACT

Although confessions are out of court statements adduced to prove the truth of their contents, they are admissible as an exception to the hearsay rule under s 76(1) of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE). However, it is recognised that considerations of fairness or reliability may make it undesirable to admit evidence of a particular confession or of some other item of prosecution evidence. Sections 76 and 78 of PACE deal respectively with confessions and with a discretion to exclude, for reasons of fairness, evidence on which the prosecution proposes to rely. To try to secure reliability and fairness, Codes of Practice have been created under ss 60(1)(a) and 66 of PACE. These attempt to control the ways in which certain types of evidence are obtained and breaches may lead to exclusion of an item of evidence under s 76 or s 78. The sections are often relied on in the alternative; in R v Mason (1988), it was held that s 78 applies to confessions as much as to any other kind of prosecution evidence.