The confession of the accused

Abstract

In the Criminal Law field, a confession is said to be a voluntary statement made by a person charged with the commission of a crime or misdemeanor, communicated to another person, wherein he acknowledges himself to be guilty of the offence charged and discloses the circumstances of the act or the share and participation which he had in it. The American Jurist Wharton, similarly defines a confession as "a statement by a person that he committed or participated in the commission of a crime". In general therefore, a confession will admit all the elements necessary to constitute the crime with which the defendant is charged. In the recent Police and Criminal evidence Act 1984, the English legislature again defined the term "confession", as including "any statement wholly or partly adverse to the :person who made it, whether made to a person in authority or not and whether made in words or otherwise".