Evidence Law - Victoria (Australia) Legal Case Commentary Essay

Evidence Law - Victoria (Australia) Legal Case Commentary - Essay Example The rationale appears to be that a confession obtained involuntarily can not be relied upon for the truth of its contents. The court’s dilemma was succinctly stated by Gibbs J in Driscoll v The Queen, who said that, ‘it is very common for an accused person to deny that he made an oral confession which police witnesses swear that he made. The accused has an obvious motive to claim that police testimony of this kind is false. On the other hand it would be unreal to imagine that every police officer in every case is too scrupulous to succumb to the temptation to attempt to secure the conviction of a person whom he believes to be guilty by saying that he has confessed to the crime with which he is charged when in fact he has not done so.’ This aspect of the voluntary nature of confession statement becomes tricky in instances where police use unconventional means in the course of obtaining a confession statement. The court attempted to draw the line in balancing these conflicting motives for the admissibility of confession statements by restating the applicable test an applying it to a scenario where police used what amounted to entrapment in R v Tofilau