PRISONERS’ STATEMENTS.

Temuka Leader, Volume 2, Issue 140, 26 April 1879, Page 2

PRISONERS’ STATEMENTS.

At the York assizes the other day a young girl of about thirteen years of ago was charged with setting fire to a stack of straw out of spite for her misti’ess. The evidence adduced against her consisted mainly of admissions made, first to a policeman, who told her it would be better to tell tho truth, and subsequently, an hour and a half after-

wards, to a second policeman, who cautioned her that anything she might . say would be evidence against her. Lord Justice Brett ruled that both these statements ot the prisoner were inadmissible —the first one on the ground that the inducement was such as might cause a girl of her age to say that which was not true ; and the second because it was made so soon after the that the impression might not have been removed ; he suggested, therefore, to the jury that it would be unsafe to convict. The prisoner was accordingly acquitted, and no doubt properly so, but the facts of the case appear to show that the conflicting views taken by judges of the duty of police constables with respect to the statements of newlyarrested prisoners have reduced the minds of these functionaries to a state of confusion. That in this case the first policeman unwarrantably exceeded his duties it is, of course, unnecessary to -"say ; hut, according to the latest and * manifestly the soundest exposition of the law, the conduct of the second policeman (except in so far as he may have beeK ; attempting to correct the error of the first) was no less open to objection. It would surely he- desirable to instruct the police that it is no part of their duty either to invite a statement from a prisoner whom they have in charge or to check it if voluntarily offered. In either case they assume"a function which does not properly belong _ to them —in the first case to the injury of the prisoner, in the second to that of the public. The “usual caution’’ which they are in the habit of administering is properly attached to the question put by a magistrate to a prisoner as to whether he has anything to say in answer to a charge ; but it has no justification as applied to a voluntary •statement which no question has elicited, nor is a police-constable the proper person to administer it.