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9 Medico-Legal & Criminological Rev. 1 (1941)

handle is hein.journals/medlgjr9 and id is 1 raw text is: THE MEDICO-LEGAL AND CRIMINOLOGICAL REVIEW Vol. IX. January, i94-1 No. i COMMON GROUND Under this heading the Editors comment on matters of interest to both professions. The views expressed are not necessarily those of the Society. ADMISSIBILITY OF A CONFESSION A CONFESSION alleged to have been made by a person accused of crime is only admissible if it has been made voluntarily, without any hope of forgive- ness or threat of punishment. A confession is inadmissible if it is made under a threat to send for a policeman or to commit to prison; or under a promise to deal favourably with the accused. A promise that the accused shall see his wife has been held, however, not to render the confession inadmissible. A confession can, of course, usually only be effectively contested if the accused is allowed to give evidence against its admissibility. His right to do so appeared until lately to be restricted by a ruling of Mr. Justice Horridge in R. v. Baldwin.* The head-note to the report of that case states that if it appears from the evidence for the prosecution that a confession was properly obtained, the defendant is not entitled at that stage to give evidence that it was improperly obtained. The effect of this proposition is, of course, as a writer in the Journal of Criminal Law points out,t to prevent the defence from showing, until the defendant comes to give evidence, that certain evidence for the prosecution is inadmissible. Even on the face of the report, however, it was doubtful whether Horridge, J., ever meant anything of the kind. He is reported to have said: Your submission comes to this . . . that in every case where a police officer gives evidence that a prisoner has been properly cautioned, his statement should be excluded by way of anticipation because the prisoner is going to deny it and set up circumstances which impute (impugn? sic) its value. These words by no means bear out the head-note, and in fact the Court of Criminal Appeal ruled recently in R. v. Cowell that the head-note is a wrong statement of law. In this case counsel for the accused objected to the admission of a statement said to have been made by the prisoner, because, he said, it was induced by the promise that if the prisoner .made it he would be allowed to go home to his wife afterwards. Counsel further * 1931, 32 Cr.App.R., 62. t 1940 (July), 4, 296. t 1940, 56 T.L.R. 629.

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