Admissibility of Confessions

Admissibility of Confessions Discuss a challenge to the admissibility of confessions on the basis of oppression seems to require a high degree of police impropriety thus will rarely be established. Confessions made during questioning are seen as powerful indications of guilt and characteristically lead to conviction; 98% of cases in which suspects confess result either in a guilty plea or a conviction following trial.   As such, legal representatives of suspects who have confessed are unlikely to secure acquittal unless the confession is excluded from the evidence before the court.   Issues of inadmissibility are determined prior to trial in both magistrates’ and Crown courts and must be based on sections 76 or 78 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE). Section 76 of PACE concerns the admissibility of potentially unreliable confession evidence in criminal proceedings and section 76(2) states that confession evidence is inadmissible if it was obtained by oppression or in circumstances that are likely to make it unreliable.   Section 76(8) defines ‘oppression’ as including ‘torture, inhuman or degrading treatment, and the use or threat of violence’. The courts have required high degrees of impropriety by the police before ruling confessions inadmissible due to oppression.   One such case was the Cardiff Three who were convicted of murder on the basis of the confession of one suspect, Stephen Miller, after protracted periods of police questioning described by the Court of Appeal as ‘hostile and intimidating’.   Given the severity of wrongdoing required before the courts will find that oppression induced the confession and moves towards less aggressive questioning techniques by the police, it is difficult to use section 76(2)(a) to exclude a confession. The ground identified in section 76(2)(b) is more fertile for rendering confessions inadmissible as the courts have identified a range of procedural failures that will be regarded as ‘circumstances likely to make a confession unreliable’.   Any breach of the rules concerning the questioning of suspects will form the basis of a challenge to the admissibility of a confession, even genuine confessions of guilt.   As such, procedural failures concerning the location, timing, duration and recording of an interview will potentially render any confession inadmissible under section 76(2)(b) as will failure to caution.   As research suggests that 10% of police interviews are conducted in breach of PACE requirements, close scrutiny of the behaviour of the police may elicit a basis for the exclusion of a confession if mistakes have been made or liberties taken with the procedural rules.   This also includes situations in which the suspect is offered an inducement such as th e promise of bail in return for a confession.   Care must be taken in asserting such a ground as the basis for the exclusion of a confession as research indicates that such inducements are may be difficult to prove and the courts have taken the view that ‘very few confessions are inspired solely by remorse’ so that other motives such as the desire to be released on bail or the hope of a lighter sentence cannot be used to exclude confessions unless there is clear evidence of misconduct on the part of the police despite evidence that suspects may confess for a variety of reasons other than guilt such as desperation to expedite release to obtain drugs if they are addicts or to protect others. Section 78 confers discretion upon the court to exclude any evidence, including confessions, if reliance upon it would lead to unfairness to the suspect.   Given the emphasis on procedural failures in section 76(2)(b), there is inevitably a fair degree of overlap between these two sections as breaches of PACE as the basis for the exclusion of evidence on the basis of unfairness under section 78.   As such, procedural failures give rise to a dual basis for an attack on the admissiblity of confession evidence.   However, section 78 goes beyond procedural rights and deals with broader issues of fairness so provides a basis upon which an unfairly obtained confession could be rendered inadmissible.   For example, a confession made following a deceptive statement by the police that the suspect’s fingerprints had been found at the scene of the crime was excluded on the basis that it was unfairly obtained although confessions made to other prisoners in a bugged cell were not e xcluded although the practice was heavily criticised by the courts. Both magistrates (in magistrates’ courts) and judges (in Crown courts) have the power to exclude confession evidence as inadmissible on the basis of section 76 and 78.   The question of admissibility of evidence will be determined at a separate hearing to ensure that evidentiary matters are resolved prior to the commencement of the trial.   Section 8A of the Magistrates Court Act 1980 empowers a magistrates’ court to rule on the admissibility of any evidence at a pre-trial hearing if both the prosecution and defence have been given an opportunity to make representations on the issue.   At Crown Court, the matter of admissibility will be resolved by a voire dire, a trial within a trial in the absence of the jury, to determine whether the confession can be relied upon as evidence.   Once the issue of inadmissibility has been raised by the defence, the onus is on the prosecution to establish that the grounds of exclusion under section 76 and 78 are not established.    Overall, a challenge to the admissibility of confessions on the basis of oppression seems to require a high degree of police impropriety thus will rarely be established.   The procedural grounds raised by section 76(2)(b) provide a more viable basis for challenge and, since the incorporation into domestic law of the rights guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights, the emphasis on fairness in section 78, which raises the right to a fair trial guaranteed by Article 6, may also be a sound basis upon which to challenge the admissibility of a confession.   However, it is important to remember that the court may be reluctant to exclude confession evidence, particularly if the procedural breach is insignificant in relation to the severity of the offence thus satisfying the statutory requirements is not a guarantee that the confession will be excluded especially in relation to serious crimes such as rape and murder. Case List R v. Bailey [1993] 3 All ER 513 R v. Crampton (1991) 92 Cr App R 369R v. Fulling [1987] 2 All ER 65R v. Mason [1988] 1 WLR 139R v. Paris, Abdullahi and Miller (1992) 97 Cr App R 99R v. Roberts [1997] 1 Cr App R 217 Bibliography Baldwin, J., ‘Police Interview Techniques: Establishing Truth or Proof?’ (1993) British Journal of Criminology 325 Clarke, C. and Milne, R., (2001) National Evaluation of the PEACE Investigative Interviewing Course, London: Home Office Davies, M., (2005) An Introduction to the Criminal Justice System in England and Wales, Harlow: Longman Publishing Dennis, I., (2002) The Law of Evidence, London: Sweet Maxwell Hunter, M., ‘Judicial Discretion: Section 78 in Practice’ [1994] Criminal Law Review 558 Maguire, M., Morgan, R. and Reiner, R., (2002) Oxford Handbook of Criminology, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press May, R., ‘Fair Play at Trial: an Interim Assessment of Section 78 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984’ [1988] Criminal Law Review 723 McConville, M., (1993) Corroboration and Confessions: the Impact of a Rule Requiring that No Conviction Can Be Sustained on the Basis of Confession Evidence Alone, London: The Stationery Office Sprack, J., (2004) A Practical Approach to Criminal Procedure, 10th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press

The Role of Women in the Society Depicted by Jane Austen in Pride and P

The Role of Women in the Society Depicted by Jane Austen in Pride and Prejudice 'Pride and Prejudice' is a novel which based in truth, explores relationships between young men and women two hundred years ago. It is not difficult for the reader to comprehend Jane Austen?s point of view, but she presents her arguments in a subtle way. Not only is it an admirable story of love lost and found, with an eventual happy ending, it also tells us a vast amount about society at the time. This, however, contrasts heavily with today's values and behaviours. In particular the role of women then was quite different to the role of women in the present day. Pride and Prejudice is mainly concerned with women of a particular social class - the Bennett Family are not poor, they are above the working class, but they are not extremely rich either. Jane Austen explores the position of young women in this situation by telling a story about what seams to be love, but is actually a novel also about the role of women and how they used love and marriage in life to gain what they wanted. She does this by explaining to the reader about all of the necessities that a woman should have, explaining about the different opinions of the different characters in the novel, which are based on opinions of real people of that time. This gives us, the twenty-first century reader, an insight into the people, the lives and the attitudes of the time. The financial status of women is perhaps the most significant aspect. In ?Pride and Prejudice?, Jane Austen describes the exact financial status of each of the characters. For example, when Mrs and Mr Bennet are talking of Mr Bingley, ?A single man of large fortune, four or five thousand a year. Wha... ...ery differently for the sisters especially as Elizabeth had turned down one proposal. If she had not married Darcy it would be very unlikely that she would have time to meet another man who would marry her as she would be considered to be too old for marriage and therefore not a good match. To me, this novel shows women living a live without fulfilment or interest. Women were seen as objects that completed a household and were looked upon the same as a beautiful statue or piece of art work. This lifestyle seems quite stifling and the lack of rights that women had at this time seems brutally unfair and backwards. The novel shows a society that was extremely judgemental and unforgiving that was too fixed on the theme of marriage where it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single woman will be in want of a husband in possession of a good fortune.

Forensic People Essay

Computer forensics is the need of carrying out computer related investigations to find legal evidence to related crimes. In order to carry out these investigations, forensics experts use computer forensics tool kits that help them in their investigations. There are a number of forensics tool kits used in different forensic activities such as: Password recovery tool kit (PRTK) This is a tool used to recover lost passwords. It is used to recover passwords of commonly used applications such as Microsoft Office, Lotus 1-2-3 in Windows NT. The file whose password is lost is dragged and dropped onto the open window of the program and Password recovery tool kit recovers its password (Forensic People, 2009). The Password Recovery Toolkit enables the proper management of passwords; it has the capability of analyzing several files at one time and recovering all types of passwords regardless of length and character type. It is also multilingual in nature for it can also recover passwords set in different languages. It is also able to recover password from many applications close to 80. It is also secure as it requires a personal security code to be able to use it. After analyzing files and the recovery of their passwords it gives an optional report file. This tool is provided by access data which is a forensics expert company and it provides a variety of forensic tools (Forensic People, 2009). Source: Smart Doctor (www. recoverlostpassword. com) Metaviewer Metaviewer is a Forensic tool that is developed by pinpoint labs. It is used by forensic examiners to retrieve the metadata for specific files. Pinpoint Metaviewer enables the user to extract files system metadata that are contained in Microsoft Office Files. The information which is retrieved can be pasted into any application. It is used to retrieve OLE metadata for specific files by forensic experts (Pinpoint labs, 2009). Source: Pinpointlabs. com Web historian It is used to give a history of all the activities a person has been carrying out online. It can give a history of the activity on common web browsers such as Mozilla Firefox, internet explorer, Netscape and opera. The tool has the capability of recording the paths for Internet activity files for each web browser Cliff’s (Jones & Belani, 2005). The tool also has the ability to reproduce the recovered data into HTML and Delimited Text File formats. The information normally gives the history of sites visited, activities on those sites and login time and also information got. This helps investigators to carry out investigations and get the suspicious activities of people online. This tool is available as a freeware tool and it’s provided by Red Cliff’s (Jones & Belani, 2005). Source: http://www. securityfocus. com/incidents/images/webfor4. jpg Wireless-Detective – Wireless Sniffer and Interception Tool Wireless-Detective is used by investigators for WLAN Lawful Interception. It is a Tool manufactured by Decision Group and assists in sniffing the WLAN so as to carryout investigation on wireless LAN Networks. Wireless-Detective is used to decode WLAN Internet traffic and reconstruct it in real time. Any online activity that is dependent on internet traffic can be sniffed and accessed. The tool captures the traffic and reconstructs all information in a list according to category and content format. It is able to search details and analysis can also be made on the captures traffic to determine evidence and also crack crimes online. This makes the Wireless LAN Detective the most preferred forensics tool for investigators because of its one stop ability to carry out investigations (Decision Group, 2010). X-way forensics. X-way forensic is a resourceful forensic tool that serves various needs of forensics investigators. It has diverse functionalities that support the collection of digital evidence and investigative process (X-ways Software Technology, 2010). This forensics tool offers a functionality of individual case management, the automatic generation of reports from activities and it is capable of recovering data using various techniques. It has time saving capabilities and is not vulnerable to data hiding techniques such as host protected areas (X-ways Software Technology, 2010). The X-ways forensics tool is supplied by X-ways software technology AG. Conclusion Computer forensics tools are very useful in helping forensic experts in retrieving evidence that is important for law makers to prosecute against crimes. It is a fast growing field that is very dynamic as it faces many cyber crime challenges. Thus it is very important for the computer and internet users to be aware of the risks they are facing and how to avoid them. References Decision Group, (2010), Wireless-Detective – Wireless Sniffer and Interception Tool. Retrieved From http://www. edecision4u. com/network_forensics_news. html Forensic People, (2009), Your One stop for Forensic Solutions, Decryption tools. Retrieved From http://www. forensicpeople. com/products. asp? tProductGroupId=1&tProductId=3 Jones, K. J. & Belani, R. (2005), Web Browser Forensics, Part 1 Retrieved From http://www. symantec. com/connect/articles/web-browser-forensics-part-1 Pinpoint labs, (2009), Free Software Utilities. Retrieved From http://www. pinpointlabs. com/new/utilities. html X-ways Software Technology, (2010), X-ways Forensics Integrated Computer Forensics Software. Retrieved From http://www. x-ways. net/forensics/

Essay on A Speech on Bullying - 1047 Words

Good Morning/Afternoon fellow class mates, the issue that I have come to share and talk about with you today is Bullying. It is all around us, everyone bullies, no matter what you think or have done, you’ve most likely bullied someone. There are many issues in the news that involve bullying and bad things that happen, aswell as people being affected from people bullying them. Bullying is happening everywhere and the chances that you will encounter it are high. Around the world bullying is big particularly within schools and online in cyber space. With all schools talking about bullying and the media regularly reporting on latest research, it could seem like were in a bullying epidemic. But, its not all bad - the incidence of†¦show more content†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¢ Children who were frequently bullied by their peers were more likely to develop psychotic symptoms in their early adolescence, says more UK research. †¢ Girls were much more likely than boys to be victims of both cyber and traditional bullying, says a recent Murdoch Childrens Research Institute study. †¢ Young people who bully have a one in four chance of having a criminal record by the age of 30. †¢ Bullying is the fourth most common reason young people seek help from childrens help services Our culture emphasizes a mentality that encourages dominance and aggression. Extreme bullying, often using sexual slurs such as gay, fag, slut and whore, is becoming a common experience for students of all ages, and in particular, for children aged 11-13. Bullying will stop when individuals protect themselves; when schools create a community of respect. We now have a society that rewards humiliating and demeaning others. Reality television shows have judges who use bullying techniques as they assess the contestants. This kind of entertainment harkens back to ancient times when the public gathered in coliseums to see spectacles, such as gladiators; who killed their foes. Why do we like to watch others get hurt, either physically or psychologically? There are many reasons but the simplest explanation is that most people identify with the winner, and they feel better about themselves; as if they had won.Show MoreRelatedCyber Bullying Speech : Bullying1009 Words   |  5 PagesCyber bullying Speech Many people in the world don’t seem to comprehend how much of a big problem bullying is. Bullying is so common now a days, that when is occurs, no one seems to notice it or worse, no one seems to care. 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