The privilege against self-incrimination is considered to be the basic principle of criminal law in England being in effect since the beginning of the 17th century. It is usually used in the process of criminal offense investigation. It is important to stress that this principle cannot be regarded as an absolute one because there is a number of other statutes used in subsequent proceedings. The privilege against self-incrimination provides forbiddance to the government as to the person’s testimonial evidence being aimed at his incrimination in the process of criminal case observation. It should be stated that this right gives an opportunity to a defendant not to testify at a trial and not to answer various official questions in case they can incriminate this person in future proceedings.
According to this principle, admissions, confessions, and various statements being taken from the defendants in the right violation are considered to be inadmissible in the criminal prosecution process. It should be stressed that all convictions being focused on such statements against self-incrimination are usually overturned on appeal till the moment of verdict support through sufficient admissible evidence. According to the law, the right against self-incrimination is not to protect artificial entities and should be asserted by the trial members (Doak, 2008).
According to Peter Murphy, the principle of privilege against self-incrimination has an illiberal attitude to the confidential communications protection from compelled disclosure. It is important to stress that this aspect can be analyzed from the position of its strengths and weaknesses in the sphere of criminal and civil cases.
Comparing Civil and criminal cases through the principle of privilege against self-incrimination it should be stated that in criminal law the defendant has a right of choice of being a witness or not; at the same time, the jury may not infer anything from his choice not to testify. Taking into account privilege against self-incrimination in civil cases one should stress that the defendant is to be compulsory cooperative and available for testimony and depositions as a trial witness. According to the statutes of the Federal court system, the civil case defendant is to provide the opponent with documents’ copy voluntarily in the process of party control, custody, or possession in case of its relevance to the disputed facts. Besides, the civil case defendant is to provide the names of those people who are informed about disputed facts in some way. So, the defendant of the civil case is completely involved in the evidence collection for the purpose of the defendant’s defeat. The privilege against self-incrimination in such cases means that the jury may infer against the part refusing to provide testifying in accordance with the judge’s instructions (Roberts, 2004).
It should be stated that the constitutional magnitude questions are not raised through the civil and criminal investigations taking into account the position of privilege against self-incrimination principle; the criminal proceeding defendant can be forced to provide civil case defense and the charges of the criminal case may force the person to select between civil suit losing and preserving his privilege. Analyzing the parallel drawn between civil and criminal cases on the basis of privilege against self-incrimination, it should be noted that this principle may cause rights violations against corporate and individual defendants. It is necessary to underline the basic minuses of the English law principle on the position of proceedings process.
- Conflict of interests;
- Illiberal attitude to the defendant’s right of choice;
- The privilege is usually justified on two basic grounds: ill-treatment discourage and the discourage of dubious confession protection;
- The privilege against self-incrimination is aimed at the protection of human dignity but not the introduction of a certain shield against conviction.
It is important to stress that privileges provided by English law in criminal and civil trial investigation sharply interact with the disadvantages and illiberal attitude of the concept to the right of people (Asche, 2001).
So, as it was shown the privileges of the principle for the criminal defendants are connected with their choice of refusing the testimony and answering official questions; while the defendants of the civil cases are to experience certain pressure in their rights being obliged to support the process of evidence collection and help in the trial investigation. It should be stressed that criminal cases provided a wide range of benefits for the defendant. The incriminating statement made by the defendant in police custody is considered to be involuntary till the moment of the person’s apprise to his rights (Durston, 2008).
English law is merely focused on wide usage of the privilege against self-incrimination principle to provide more freedom and liberty to people, even accused ones. It should be stressed that this aspect tends to be beneficial in criminal cases while the defendants of the civil one are limited in their choice and opportunities.
References
- Asche, Austin. Privilege against self-incrimination. Northern Territory Law Reform Committee. 2001.
- Doak, J. and McGurlay, C. Criminal Evidence in Context. 2nd edition. Law Matters, 2008.
- Durston, G. Evidence Texts and Materials. Oxford, 2008.
- Roberts, P. and Zuckerman, A. Criminal Evidence. Oxford, 2004.