In the law of criminal evidence, a confession is a statement by a suspect in crime which is adverse to that person.
Some secondary authorities, such as Black's Law Dictionary, define a confession in more narrow terms, e.g. as "a statement admitting or acknowledging all facts necessary for conviction of a crime", which would be distinct from a mere admission of certain facts that, if true, would still not, by themselves, satisfy all the elements of the offense.
The value of confessions, however, are discussed, and law generally request cross-checking them with objective facts and others forms of evidence (exhibits, testimonies from witnesses, etc.)
This aspect concerning moral guilt has been carried on in various legislative codes, in which a criminal is considered worse if he does not confess to his crimes.
The People's Republic of China has been shown to systematically employ forced televised confession, often in an extrajudicial context, against Chinese dissidents and workers of various human rights group in an attempt to discredit, smear and suppress dissident voices and activism.
Scripted confessions, obtained via systematic duress and torture, are broadcast on the state television.
[4] In the case of trained interviewers, many interrogation teams are practiced in the "Reid technique", which identifies behavioral cues common for a guilty suspect including slouching, fidgeting, and avoiding eye contact.
Through the use of minimization, when an investigator justifies the crime with possible excuses to make it easier to confess to, and the use of the false evidence ploy, mentioning evidence that proves the suspect guilty (which actually does not exist), many innocent people end up confessing to crimes they have not committed.
Following a representation by the defendant or upon the court's own motion, evidence tendered by a co-defendant of a defendant's confession must not be admitted unless the co-defendant proves on the balance of probabilities that it was not obtained: The common law rules on the admission of confessions are preserved,[15] and apply so long as the statement was made voluntarily.
If so, (3) would the admission of the evidence have such an adverse effect on the fairness of the proceedings that the judge ought not to admit it?Canadian common law on confessions is derived directly from English decisions and legal principles.
Selvi vs. State of Karnataka" in which it was held that Narcoanalysis, polygraph (also called Lie-detector) and brain mapping tests to be unconstitutional as they violate Article 20(3) of the Constitution.
In the 1936 case Brown v. Mississippi, the United States Supreme Court ruled that convictions which are based solely upon confessions coerced by violence violate the Due Process Clause.
According to a study published by the American Journal of Forensic Psychiatry, approximately 80 percent of US criminal cases are solved by a subject's confession.