UNRELIABLE CONFESSIONS IN MURDER CASES: A QUALITATIVE STUDY OF THE REVERSED JUDICIAL DECISIONS IN PAKISTAN

Abstract

Different researchers produced enormous literature on false confession by employing different methodologies, including doctrinal research, surveys, experiments and trial transcripts. These studies documented the existence, causes, and effects of false confession. In addition, these studies examined the authenticity of confession, how the police obtain a false confession and the behavioral and psychological process behind false confession. However, many of the studies could not investigate the errors that the trials courts and the first appellate courts commit while drawing the inference of guilt of the accused from confession. As a result, the question “what errors do the trial courts and the first appellate courts commit while reasoning with confession” has not been the subject of much analysis. The present study is an effort to address that gap in the literature. After qualitative content analysis of the five appellate courts’ decisions, this article found that the trial courts and the first appellate courts used inadmissible, implausible, contradictory, and uncorroborated confession against the accused in murder cases in Pakistan. Morover, the trial courts and the first appellate courts failed to look into the possibility of alternative inference which could have been drawn from the confession.