A treatise on medical jurisprudence / by Francis Wharton and Moreton Stillé ; the medical part revised and corrected, with numerous additions, by Alfred Stillé.
- Date:
- 1860
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A treatise on medical jurisprudence / by Francis Wharton and Moreton Stillé ; the medical part revised and corrected, with numerous additions, by Alfred Stillé. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.
1037/1080 (page 995)
![BOOK 5.] HOW CONFESSIONS ARE TO BE GUARDED. [§ 1306 trusted, and sick of living, have accused themselves, and this perhaps sincerely though falsely, of the murder of infants whom they never bore, or who died naturally. By one, who was thus life-weary, was the whole scene described with the most touching minuteness—the wailing of the young child—its piteous look—its burial in a little grave under the matted and crisp spires at the foot of a pine. Yet no one had been buried there, nor had the mother aught to do with the child’s death. § 1305. Then sometimes the same weariness of life seizes upon a false con- fession as a congenial method of suicide. Death is sought in a way which may best correspond to the then morbid condition of the brain ; in a way which involves others, though innocently on their part, in the self-murder, and makes them strike the blow. “ I fling myself, not into the river, nor into the abyss, but upon the scaffold.” Thus Lord Clarendon tells us of a Frenchman, named Hubert, who was convicted and executed on his confession of having occasioned the great fire in London, “ although,” says that sagacious jurist and historian, “neither the judges nor any one present believed him guilty, but that he was a poor, distracted wretch, weary of life, and who chose to part with it in this way •”(/) § 1306. Before a confession be acted upon, therefore, let these tests be ap- plied. Let it be remembered, to sum up in the words of a great civilian, that “ there sometimes lurks, under the shadow of an apparent tranquillity, an in- sanity, which impels men readily to accuse themselves of all kinds of iniquity. Some, deluded by their imaginations, suspect themselves of crimes which they have never committed. A melancholy temperament, the taedium vitae, and an unaccountable propensity to their own destruction, urge some to the most false confessions ; whilst they were extracted from others by the dread of tor- ture, or the tedious misery of the dungeon.”(g) The last motive rarely exists among ourselves, but the first may be not in- frequent. The first precaution is to have absolute proof of the corpus delicti. This, however, is not enough. There may be abundant proof that a crime was committed, and yet the confession may be false. We must exact proof that connects the supposed criminal with the actual crime. We must examine into his condition of mind, and see how far insanity, or remorse, or bravado, or weariness of life, or delusion, may have influenced him. When these tests are applied, we are ready to take the confession as impressed with its true sig- nificance. It thus becomes the most positive form of proof.(h) (/) Continuation of Lord Clarendon’s Memoirs, written by himself, p. 352. (y) Hein. Ex. 18, § 6. (h) “To guard against false confessions,”says Jeremy Bentham, “thetwo following rules ought to be observed:— “ 1. One is, that, to operate in the character of direct evidence, confession cannot be too particular. In respect of all material circumstances, it should be as particular as, by dint of interrogation, it can be made to be. Why so ? Because (supposing it false) the more particular it is, the more distinguishable facts it will exhibit, the truth of which (supposing them false) will be liable to be disproved by their incompatibility with any facts, the truth of which may have come to be established by other evidence. The greater the particularity required on the part of the confession, the greater is the care taken of the confessionalist—the greater the care taken to guard him against undue conviction, brought upon him by his own imbecility and imprudence. “2. The other rule is, that, in respect of all material facts (especially the act which](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21987270_1037.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
