Court-Martial Trial Practice Blog
Akorede Omotayo, The Right to Silence–or the Presumption of Guilt.
This is an interesting discussion from another country on something we are familiar with.
It will be recalled that the right to silence formerly comprises the privilege against self-incrimination and the right not to have adverse inferences drawn from his silence. Prior to the CJPOA, no evidential significance could be attached to an accused’s exercise of the right to silent, save when the accused and the victim were on even terms. However, theprovisions in the CJPOA, particularly ss 34-35 have sought to alter this principle to the extent that the question that this essay grapples with, is whether the right to silence,despite the changes, is still useful in protecting an accused’s supposed ‘constitutionalright’ of innocence, until proven guilty.
We are familiar with this–
Police Interview– a search for truth or guilt?To start with, current police interviewing guidelines describe the investigative interview as a ‘search for truth’. But this assumption to some academics is itself mired. As Kelly Benneworth-Gray argues, ‘truth’ and ‘honesty’ are locally invoked interactional resources, produced, recognised and contested in two very different sequential environments. The upshot of this is that regardless of the offer of truth made by the accused, the main purpose of a police interview is to mark a disjuncture between the testimonies of the suspect and the alleged victim and construct the suspect’s testimony as implausible.