The admissibility of secondary confessions

Abstract

Difficult questions about admissibility arise if a suspect makes an involuntary confession to the police that is followed by a later apparently voluntary confession, but which is somehow connected to the first involuntary confession. The problem is that not only could the reason for the inadmissibility of the primary confession still exist at the time the secondary confession is made, but also that the accused could consider himself or herself bound by the primary confession. This would effectively deprive the accused of the choice of whether or not to make the secondary confession and would therefore render it involuntary. Except for asking whether a secondary confession was voluntarily made, the next most important question is whether anything happened to cause the accused to believe that he or she was not bound by his or her primary confession. Both questions can be answered by considering certain identifiable objective factors.