Confessions

The dangers of confessions

• It happens that people confess to crimes that they did not commit

  • Threats, torture or “station house syndrome” (If you are being questioned by a lot of people and they all say “you did it”, then you might actually start to believe that you committed the crime.)

• A confession early on in an investigation can cause the police to get “tunnel vision”

Def. Confession

A statement made by an accused to a person in authority that is adverse to his/her interest in a criminal trial

• The most obvious person in authority = The Gardaí

• That a person confessed to their friends or family does not constitute a confession in law. 

Exclusions of confessions

1. Discretionary exclusion

2. Mandatory exclusion of confessions

Discretionary exclusion

The judges ALWAYS have a general discretion to exclude confession evidence. 

• In some circumstances the judges have to exclude the confession but they always have a general discretion to do so. 

Types - Mandarory exclusion of confessions

1. Threats

2. Positive inducements

3. Oppression

4. Breach of fundamental fairness

5. The confession was obtained as a result of a breach of constitutional rights

Mandatory exclusions - Threats

Test set out in People (DPP) v McCann

1. Were the words used by the person in authority, objectively viewed, capable of amounting to a threat?

2. Did the accused subjectively understand them as such

   1. What constitutes a threat depends on how the person receiving it interprets it

3. Was the confession the result of the threat?

   1. Need for a casual link

   2. Even if a threat or inducement was made at some earlier point, a later confession can still be admissible if the causal link is broken. 

Mandatory exclusions - Positive inducements

Positive inducements = “If you confess I will give you X”

• Does not include the police expressing sympathy like “I don’t blame you” or the police downplaying moral seriousness of the offence
  
  Test set out in People (DPP) v McCann:

1. Were the words used by the person in authority, objectively viewed, capable of amounting to a promise?

2. Were the words used by the person in authority, objectively viewed, capable of amounting to a threat?

3. Was his confession in fact the result of the promise?

   1. Need for a casual link

Mandatory exclusions - Oppression

Something has been done to sap the voluntary nature of the confession (R v. Priestly)

• All forms of torture like the deprivation of sleep or food

• A form of oppression is to bring in close family members or friends to see the accused with the goal of that visit causing him to break down and confess. 

• What constitutes oppression is subjective! 

Things that are NOT oppression:

• Inexperience of dealing with the police or the criminal justice system does not constitute oppression! Even if the interaction is traumatic. (DPP v PA)

• Simply because a police questioning is robust (even unpleasant) this does not constitute oppression. (DPP v Howard)

Mandatory exclusions - Breach of fundamental fairness

If the police do something unfair (not strictly illegal) to get the confession. (People (DPP) v Conroy)

• Trickery

  • Ex. The police lied and said that they had CCTV footage

• If a person requests legal assistance but the person keeps getting moved from station to station so that the legal assistance can never make it → Unfair!

• The mere fact that police used false pretence or a trick in interrogation does not necessarily invalidate a subsequent confession.

  • For example, The police say that a witness saw you commit the crime. But you know that the witness in question is blind and can therefore not have seen you commit the crime. 

Mandatory exclusions - The confessions was obtained as a result of a breach of constitutional rights

Established in People (AG) v. O’Brien

• Ex. If you are held in detention for longer than the maximum period of detention, that result is that the confession given will be excluded. 

LIMITS:

1. A breach of one of the accused’s constitutional rights must have occurred

2. That breach must have been conscious and deliberate.

3. There is a causal link between the breach and the evidence obtained.

4. There must be no extraordinary excusing circumstances

(People (DPP) v. Madden)

Confession of a co-accused

What if two people share a trial and only one person confesses? 

• This confession can only be used against the person who made the confession and not the co-accused. This is, however, only the case as long as they share a trial. (the jury must be told about this) 

• If one party is pleading guilty and one party is not pleading guilty. Are they sharing a trial? NO! They are not co-accused!