Self Incrimination in UK Law

Leading Cases
  • Rank Film Distributors Ltd v Video Information Centre
    • House of Lords
    • 08 Abril 1981

    Moreover whatever direct use may or may not be made of information given, or material disclosed, under the compulsory process of the court, it must not be overlooked that, quite apart from that, its provision or disclosure may set in train a process which may lead to incrimination or may lead to the discovery of real evidence of an incriminating character. In the present case, this cannot be discounted as unreal: it is not only a possible but probably the intended result.

  • Istel (AT & T) Ltd v Tully
    • House of Lords
    • 20 Julio 1992

    Indeed, in my opinion, the privilege can only be justified on two grounds, first that it discourages the ill treatment of a suspect and secondly that it discourages the production of dubious confessions. I regard the privilege against self incrimination exercisable in civil proceedings as an archaic and unjustifiable survival from the past when the court directs the production of relevant documents and requires the defendant to specify his dealings with the plaintiff's property or money.

    I can for myself see no argument in favour of the privilege against producing a document the contents of which may go to show that the holder has committed a criminal offence. The contents of the document will speak for itself and there is no risk of the false confession which underlies the privilege against having to answer questions that may incriminate the speaker.

  • Rank Film Distributors Ltd v Video Information Centre
    • Court of Appeal (Civil Division)
    • 15 Febrero 1980

    The reasoning of the judgments is often terse and difficult to follow. Mr. Nicholls was the first to concede that it was impossible to derive from these cases any coherent underlying principle by which to distinguish the exceptional case where the privilege is not available from the normal case where it is. The furthest one can go is to say that they indicate a willingness on the part of nineteenth century judges to override the privilege when to allow it would defeat the justice of the case.

  • Bishopsgate Investment Management Ltd v Maxwell; Cooper v Maxwell; Mirror Group Newspapers Plc v Maxwell
    • Court of Appeal (Civil Division)
    • 11 Febrero 1993

    It is plain to my mind - and not least from the Cork Report - that part of the mischief in the old law before the Insolvency Act 1985 was the apparent inability of the law to deal adequately with dishonesty or malpractice on the part of bankrupts or company directors.

  • Brown v Stott (Procurator Fiscal, Dunfermline)
    • Privy Council
    • 05 Diciembre 2000

    The jurisprudence of the European Court very clearly establishes that while the overall fairness of a criminal trial cannot be compromised, the constituent rights comprised, whether expressly or implicitly, within article 6 are not themselves absolute.

  • R v Mushtaq (Ashfaq Ahmed)
    • House of Lords
    • 21 Abril 2005

    In terms of section 6(1) of the 1998 Act it is therefore unlawful for the judge and jury to act in a way which is incompatible with a defendant's right against self-incrimination as implied into article 6(1). Such a direction was an invitation to the jury to act in a way that was incompatible with the appellant's right against self-incrimination under article 6(1). As such, the direction was itself incompatible with that right.

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Legislation
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Books & Journal Articles
  • Selfincrimination: Recent Developments
    • No. 4-1, March 1996
    • Journal of Financial Crime
    • 47-51
    The privilege against selfincrimination was invented by judges in 1645 to curb the excesses of their colleagues in the Court of Star Chamber. Since then, it has become embedded in the common Law w...
  • THE PRIVILEGE AGAINST SELFINCRIMINATION
    • No. 1-1, January 1992
    • Journal of Financial Regulation and Compliance
    • 116-119
    This briefing reviews the historical and recent development of the privilege against selfincrimination and its partiadar relevance in the field of financial regulation. The author discusses the id...
  • The privilege against self-incrimination
    • No. 20-2, April 2016
    • International Journal of Evidence & Proof, The
    In ‘Rethinking the Privilege Against Self-Incrimination’, Mike Redmayne offered an ingenious proposal that both motivated the privilege and explained the difference between statements and other for...
  • The Privilege against Self-Incrimination
    • No. 7-4, December 2016
    • New Journal of European Criminal Law
    This article revisits the different justifications of the privilege against self-incrimination and examines two topical issues, the relation between the privilege and documentary evidence and the a...
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Law Firm Commentaries
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