Section 120 of the Evidence Act, 1975 (NRCD 323) requires the prosecution to prove that a confession statement was made voluntarily where its admissibility is challenged. The section provides as follows: “(1) In a criminal action, evidence of a hearsay statement made by an accused admitting a matter which (a) constitutes; or (b) forms an essential part of; or (c) taken together with other information already disclosed by him is a basis for an inference of, the commission of a crime for which he is being tried in the action is not admissible against him unless the statement was made voluntarily. (2) Evidence of a hearsay statement shall not be admissible under subsection (1) if the statement was made by the declarant while arrested, restricted or detained by the State unless the statement was made in the presence of an independent witness (other than a police officer or member of the Armed Forces) approved by the accused.”
Corpus delicti is nothing more than the facts that constitute the offence for which an accused person has been charged. In an assault case for instance, the corpus delicti is the facts that establish that someone had actually been assaulted; i.e. evidence of the assault and it includes medical reports if any of the injuries sustained, etc.
The voluntary confession statements of the 1st and 2nd appellants remained admissible despite their retraction and were supported by independent evidence, including PW1's testimony, the medical findings, and the conduct of the appellants before and after the offence. The post-mortem findings were consistent with a deliberate and sustained assault rather than a failed robbery.
Section 120 does not prescribe a rigid procedure for selecting an independent witness. Its purpose is to ensure the transparency and reliability of confession statements. That purpose was fulfilled. The law is concerned with substance rather than technicalities, and a voluntary confession should not be excluded because of minor procedural irregularities that do not affect its fairness.
What all these definitions quoted above imply is that a confession is an admission of guilt made before proper authority or to another person by either a suspect who is facing a criminal charge or by someone not yet suspected of having committed the crime under investigations . This pre-supposes the existence of a crime for which the confession or admission was made by one to another person or authority confirming one’s guilt. This means that there must first of all be a crime. Secondly, the maker of the statement that qualifies to be termed a ‘confession’ might have been either an accused on trial who made that statement to the court trying the case admitting the crime or offence (i.e. judicial confession) or, the maker might have been a suspect or someone who made the said statement voluntarily to the authority in charge of investigating the crime or to someone else, admitting the crime that had been committed (i.e. extrajudicial confession). In an epitome therefore, before any statement could be used against the maker as a confession statement, there must be the existence of a crime or an offence that the alleged confession tends to support. Again, the confession must be voluntary.
Statement of an accused as evidence against a co-accused
This statement exhibit M is most damaging to the appellants but it is quite clear in law that it is not evidence against them as it is a statement made by an accused person in the absence of the other accused and not repeated at the trial where it was rather flatly denied.
Whether a bare statement can ground a conviction without proof that the crime occurred
In criminal proceedings, when there is evidence that a crime has been committed and someone is suspected of having committed the said offence, the police conduct investigations to gather information to support their suspicion that it was the person suspected who committed the crime. It is when the said suspect volunteers information connecting him to the crime being investigated that the said information could be used against him to buttress the suspicion. This is not what happened in this case. This case presents a situation where I am hearing for the first time in my whole judicial career that a conviction could be based on a mere allegation by a rabble-rouser or a braggart that he had done something criminal in nature when there is no evidence that suggests in the least that the alleged offence or crime had indeed been committed or was ever committed.
