BBC journalist Ray Gosling confesses "murder by compassion" on TV show

[The Minsky Moment]

Incidentally, the guy has not - and said he will not - name his lover or the place or date of his death. Are you still positive this is sufficient to get a conviction out of this "confession"?

It depends how many AIDS-ridden lovers he had who recently died in hospital.
If hospital visitor logs show him as being there shortly before death and autopsy records are consistent with his story, then his confession could get him into a bit of bother.

[Malthus]

The confession is evidence in itself.  The circumstances of the confession can be offered to prove up its validity.  You are correct that there still could be a defense in theory, but if the physical evidence is not inconsistent with the confession, good luck.

How many times have we seen people convicted based on testimony that they confessed to cellmates?  Bunches.  I'd say that the policy of STFU is a good one even for people other than Marti.

But in these cases this was not the sole evidence. Here you have nothing - to even the victim's identity (I assume it can be traced back to some guy who died of AIDS, but can it be proven beyond reasonable doubt? I doubt it).

It's akin to Malthus's story about the guy killing another guy on some navy ship back during WW2 - I thought the conclusion back then was that it would be nigh impossible to convict someone based on that confession, so not sure what changed since then (other than the fact that this is Languish so everybody is contrarian).

I can see a couple of key differences between those fact situations.

For one, it is going to be a lot easier to determine the identity of the victim and the circumstances of his death, given the nexus between a man and his lover who allegedly died relatively recently in hospital is a lot closer than that between a guy and some unnamed sailor who allegedly died many years ago in WW2, and a death in a hospital bed is going to have a lot more documentation than that of someone allegedly falling overboard on a dark and storm night.

For another, a story told to a young boy has a lot less evidentiary weight than one told on national TV in front of millions of viewers and presumably recorded for posterity.

[The Brain]

Hospital visitor log? Is this East Germany? Oh, right.

[Barrister]

Incidentally, the guy has not - and said he will not - name his lover or the place or date of his death. Are you still positive this is sufficient to get a conviction out of this "confession"?

Marty, I'm not positive that any case will get a conviction - never mind this one.   

All I can tell you is that any statement against interest is admissible in court against the maker of the statement, and thus the statement on national tv could be used against him.

You can have "john doe" victims as well, and you need not state with precision the date that the offence happened.

What could be more of an issue is where it happened - a UK court can only prosecute an event that happened in the UK, and if you can't prove (through the admission or otherwise) what coutry it happened in you could have a fatal problem.

But all of those are 'may' could be' and 'possible'.  I have no idea if they'd get a conviction -  but on the face of it it isn't impossible for the Crown Prosecution Service to try.

[The Minsky Moment]

A collegue recently defended a murder where the principal piece of evidence directly tying the defendant to the crime (commited nearly 20 years ago) was an alleged contemporaneous confession.  And where another person had also confessed to the same crime.

He won the case but it was by no means a sure thing.  More to the point, the DA's office brought it.

Confessions carry a lot weight with juries and prosecutors know it.

[Barrister]

Confessions carry a lot weight with juries and prosecutors know it.

That may be more of an American phenonenon.  Over the last 20 years with some of the wrongful conviction cases our courts are very careful about confessions, triply so for jailhouse informant confessions.  Even with a jury trial there are lengthy warnings given to a jury about using confessions.

Canadian lawyers, when we put on our snooty 'we're better than Americans' hat, start their criticism of US justice by your over-reliance on some (to us) rather dubious confessions.

[Razgovory]

So apparently Ray Gosling is a silly goose?

[grumbler]

That may be more of an American phenonenon.  Over the last 20 years with some of the wrongful conviction cases our courts are very careful about confessions, triply so for jailhouse informant confessions.  Even with a jury trial there are lengthy warnings given to a jury about using confessions.

Canadian lawyers, when we put on our snooty 'we're better than Americans' hat, start their criticism of US justice by your over-reliance on some (to us) rather dubious confessions.

That's probably not the worst abuse in the US legal system, but it certainly is one of them - especially where the person witnessing the confession is getting time off his/her own sentence for testifying.

[jimmy olsen]

A collegue recently defended a murder where the principal piece of evidence directly tying the defendant to the crime (commited nearly 20 years ago) was an alleged contemporaneous confession.  And where another person had also confessed to the same crime.

He won the case but it was by no means a sure thing.  More to the point, the DA's office brought it.

Confessions carry a lot weight with juries and prosecutors know it.

What happened to the other guy who confessed?

[The Minsky Moment]

What happened to the other guy who confessed?

Its complicated, but it was eventually determined that he was immune from prosecution.

However,  he was stuck in jail on a variety of other bad stuff.

[jimmy olsen]

What happened to the other guy who confessed?

Its complicated, but it was eventually determined that he was immune from prosecution.

However,  he was stuck in jail on a variety of other bad stuff.

If one of his confessions was bogus, what about the other bad stuff, how do we know he really did that? Did he confess to them as well, or was their other evidence?

[The Larch]

I don't know why he has decided to admit it; there's pretty much a "don't ask, don't tell" attitude building up over here about such cases.

Give it another ten years and the law will get amended to allow the right-to-die anyway.

Isn't there a budding public debate about right-to-die and assisted suicide in the UK nowadays?

[garbon]

Isn't there a budding public debate about right-to-die and assisted suicide in the UK nowadays?

Reading can be fun and informative.