ABSTRACT
In spite of the decision’s persuasive force in favour of admitting the accused’s statement as a voluntary, non-induced, response to police questions, English law remained unsettled and continued to generate contradictory case law. This suggests a degree of ambivalence on the part of individual judges, firstly, in respect of the custodial questioning of suspects by the police and, secondly, in regard to the admissibility of evidence obtained by such questioning. A number of decisions from the period suggest that judges increasingly admitted confessions as ‘voluntary’ expressions of guilt, even where the accused had not been formally cautioned. Such cases reveal that a narrow interpretation of the voluntariness rule, as advocated by the majority judges in Johnston, was generally followed by the English courts. The case law indicates that some judges continued to give the concept of voluntariness an extended meaning.
