Supplemental Material for An Exploration of Laypeople’s Perceptions of Confession Evidence and Interrogation Tactics

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Confession Evidence

Admissibility of confession evidence: Principles of hearsay and the rule of voluntariness

2021 ◽  
pp. 136571272110022
Author(s):  
Jennifer Porter
Keyword(s):  
Western Australia ◽  
Common Law ◽  
South Australia ◽  
Judicial Discretion ◽  
Trial Judge ◽  
Important Policy ◽  
Oral Testimony ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Law ◽  
Confession Evidence

The common law test of voluntariness has come to be associated with important policy rationales including the privilege against self-incrimination. However, when the test originated more than a century ago, it was a test concerned specifically with the truthfulness of confession evidence; which evidence was at that time adduced in the form of indirect oral testimony, that is, as hearsay. Given that, a century later, confession evidence is now mostly adduced in the form of an audiovisual recording that can be observed directly by the trial judge, rather than as indirect oral testimony, there may be capacity for a different emphasis regarding the question of admissibility. This article considers the law currently operating in Western Australia, Queensland and South Australia to see whether or not, in the form of an audiovisual recording, the exercise of judicial discretion as to the question of the admissibility of confession evidence might be supported if the common law test of voluntariness was not a strict test of exclusion.

Safeguards

2020 ◽  
pp. 189-214
Author(s):  
William Douglas Woody ◽  
Krista D. Forrest
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Court Decisions ◽  
False Confession ◽  
Video Record ◽  
Limited Effectiveness ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Confession Evidence

This chapter examines safeguards for suspects and defendants who provide false or coerced confessions, opening with laypersons’ typical acceptance of confessions. The authors then review protections from law enforcement, particularly recommendations that police video-record interviews and interrogations with a balanced perspective. The authors next explore court decisions that shape jurors’ roles in evaluation of confession evidence; they then discuss the growing body of scholarship that investigates jurors’ perceptions and trial decisions. The authors then examine judges, ways that judges differ from jurors and juries, and ways that judges remain vulnerable to false or coerced confessions and the testimony of experts. The authors emphasize the limited effectiveness of these safeguards to prevent a false confession from becoming a mistaken conviction.

as illegally obtained evidence is not, ipso facto, automatically rendered inadmissible. The House of Lords ruled in Sang that no discretion existed to exclude evidence simply because it had been illegally or improperly obtained. A court could only exclude relevant evidence where its effect would be 'unduly prejudicial'. This is reflected in s 78(1) of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) 1984 (below). This perhaps surprising rule was supported by the Royal Commission on Criminal Justice (although the argument there w as chiefly focused on the admissibility of confession evidence). An action for damages for false imprisonment. In some cases the damages for such an action would be likely to be nominal if the violation by the detainer does not have much impact on the detainee. Consider cases under this heading like Christie v Leachinsky. Damages can, however, be considerable. Apart from the question of civil remedies, it is important to remember that, if the arrest is not lawful, there is the right to use reasonable force to resist it. This is a remedy, however, of doubtful advisability as the legality of the arrest will only be properly tested after the event in a law court. If a police officer was engaged in what the courts decide was a lawful arrest or conduct, then anyone who uses force against the officer might have been guilty of an offence of assaulting an officer in the execution of his duty contrary to s of the Police Act 1964. Police Act Section Assaults on constables

2012 ◽  
pp. 358-358
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Police Officer ◽  
Royal Commission ◽  
Relevant Evidence ◽  
House Of Lords ◽  
Civil Remedies ◽  
Confession Evidence ◽  
The Right ◽  
False Imprisonment

Confession Evidence

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia C. Busso ◽  
Saul M. Kassin
Keyword(s):  
Confession Evidence
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