Law of Evidence

Admission and Confession
Admissions and confessions are part of the exceptions to hearsay rule. In Singapore, there are 2 main regimes governing the admissibility of admissions and confessions - the Evidence Act ("EA") and the Criminal Procedure Code ("CPC").

Definition
Under s 17(1) EA, an admission is "a statement, oral or documentary, which suggests any inference as to any fact in issue or relevant fact, and which is made by any of the persons and under the circumstances hereinafter mentioned."

Confession is a subset of admission, because it is defined as "an admission made at any time by a person accused of an offence, stating or suggesting the inference that he committed that offence": s 17(2) EA. It must be noted that "confession" is defined differently in different jurisdictions.

It is important to determine whether a statement amounts to an admission or a confession because under the EA, different rules of admissibility may apply depending on whether a statement is an admission or a confession. However, under the CPC, confessions, admissions, any partially incriminating statement or any exculpatory statement are all subject to the same rules of admissibility under the CPC.

In Anandagoda v R [1962] MLJ 289 (Privy Council) (approved in Chin Seow Noi v PP [1994] 1 SLR 135, Lord Guest held that "[t]he test whether a statement is a confession is an objective one, whether to the mind of a reasonable person reading the statement at the time and in the circumstances in which it was made it can be said to amount to a statement that the accused committed the offence or which suggested the inference that he committed the offence. The statement must be looked at as a whole and it must be considered on its own terms without reference to extrinsic facts... It is irrelevant to consider whether the accused intended to make a confession. If the facts in the statement added together suggest the inference that the accused is guilty of the offence then it is nonetheless a confession even though the accused at the same time protests his innocence." In determining whether a statement amounts to a confession, it is immaterial that the statement contains exculpatory materials: Kelvin Chai v PP [1999] 1 SLR 25.