Again
on the same Land
Page 365
he strongly objects to making the prisoner a witness, which Ordinance No 3 of 1872 appears to me to be framed entirely in favor of, which he alone has authority.
In Blackstone, Stephen on his Commentaries, and in Taylor on Evidence, will be found cautions against receiving the statements of prisoners - cautions founded on the impossibility of getting at the motives for self-accusation.
In confession alone is sufficient for conviction of a prisoner; but the Courts state the confession of a prisoner is held insufficient in cases where the corpus delicti is not otherwise proved.
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It has been proved that confessions are sometimes not reliable. Three men were tried and convicted of the murder of M H, one of the men confessed the murder under a promise of pardon. Afterwards it was found that M H was alive.
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In some cases, the statement of a well-known person to the case where a strong motive exists for self-exculpation, their statements in their own favor are not receivable.
In Russell on Crimes by Greaves (1865), the text book on the subject, Chap 4 of Book 6, Vol 3, pp 365, 464, I find Mr. Stephen questioning the value of admissions by a prisoner. In England, it is doubtful whether a person charged setting up a defence, the production of a young woman being stated to be the one who had run away, and it was proved that the produced woman was not the one, and the prisoner was afterwards hanged.
There would be great danger of the lowest grade of prisoners being led on by weak and ignorant faults...