Friday, June 21, 2019

Law of Evidence Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 5000 words

Law of Evidence - Essay Examplein circumstances that render them unreliable. The obvious footrace is whether or not the record was made voluntarily or not as evidence by the Section 76(2) of cubic yard. There are other safeguards against the price of admission of a vindication that may have been improperly obtained and thus rendering them unreliable. Section 78 of PACE provides that a confession may be excluded if admitting the confession would render the proceedings unfair.4 Section 82(3) of PACE incorporates the common law principle of judicial discretion and permits the exclusion of a confession statement if its prejudicial takings would exceed it probative value.5 The main purposes of the safeguards against admitting confession statements was articulated by Lord Griffiths in Lam Chi-Ming v R as follows Their Lordships are of the view that the more(prenominal) recent English cases established that the rejection of an improperly obtained confession is not dependent only upon possible unreliability but also upon the principle that a cosmos cannot be compelled to incriminate himself and upon the importance that attaches in a civilized society to proper behaviour by law towards those in their custody.6 Thus the protections contemplated by PACE telling to the admissibility of confessions are three fold to safeguard against the admissibility of unreliable confessions to protect the incriminate persons right against self-incrimination and to protect the accused person from police impropriety. Although a infer following a voire dire (a trial outside the presence of the gore) may rule that the confession was obtained fairly and is thus admissible, the circumstances in which the confession was obtained may nevertheless be laid out before the jury. For instance, in Musthtaq the House of Lords ruled that a judge must instruct the jury that if, despite the judges admission of the confession, if they find that the confession was obtained oppressively or impro perly, they are required to disregard it.7 It was also held in Wizzard v R. that the judge must instruct the jury to disregard a confession admitted into evidence if There is a possibility that the jury may conclude that a statement was made by the defendant, that statement was true, but, the statement was, or may have been, induced by oppression.8 Thus the courts have expounded upon the protections articulated in PACE relative to the admissibility of a confession statement. The main purpose is to safeguard against an unfair and unjust outcome by protecting the accuseds right against self-incrimination, protect the accused against police impropriety and to safeguard against the admission of an unreliable statement. Building on the protection purposes implicit in PACE, Lord Steyn stated in Mitchell v R that the jury ought not to know that the admissibility of a confession statement was determined in a voire dire. As Lord Steyn noted There is no synthetic reason why the jury should k now about the decision of the judge. It is irrelevant

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.