Vinson Ariste v The King (Bahamas)

An appellate court should not uphold the admission of a confession where the trial judge gives no reasons and the record does not show that material evidence bearing on voluntariness was considered. Under section 20 of the Evidence Act 1996, once oppression or unreliability is represented, the prosecution must prove beyond reasonable doubt that the confession was not obtained in that way. In assessing whether a conviction is unsafe or unsatisfactory, the court may consider cumulative features including inadequate caution on confession evidence, lack of representation, omission of a good-character direction and a later contrasting ruling on similar evidence. The appeal was allowed and the conviction quashed.

The appellant was convicted of armed robbery in March 2012 and sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment. The prosecution case depended on a confession made during police detention, which the appellant alleged had been obtained through violence and without legal advice. The trial judge admitted the confession after a voir dire but gave no reasons and the appellant was unrepresented at trial. The Court of Appeal of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas dismissed the appeal on 18 February 2013 and affirmed the conviction and sentence. The central issues before the Board were the admissibility of the confession, the adequacy of the jury directions, and the overall safety of the conviction.

Appeal allowed; conviction quashed.

1. The Board applied section 13(1) of the Court of Appeal Act 2006. The alternative grounds for allowing a criminal appeal include a wrong decision on law or fact and a verdict that is unsafe or unsatisfactory. The proviso did not apply because the Board was not satisfied that no miscarriage of justice had occurred.
2. Under section 20 of the Evidence Act 1996, where it is represented that a confession may have been obtained by oppression or rendered unreliable by anything said, done or omitted in the circumstances, the prosecution must prove beyond reasonable doubt that it was not so obtained or rendered unreliable.
3. Turner J gave no reasons for admitting the confession after the voir dire. The Board could not conclude that he had considered three matters troubling the voluntariness of the confession: the absence of legal representation during detention, the failure to record visible injuries in the detention record, and the inherent improbability of an unrepresented suspect voluntarily confessing to several serious offences without independent evidence. Failure to consider relevant evidence is an error warranting appellate intervention. The cursory judgment of the Court of Appeal also failed to address those matters and was itself a wrong decision on law or fact. This reasoning was supported by Henderson v Foxworth Investments Ltd [2014] UKSC 41, [2014] 1 WLR 2600.
4. Alternatively, four further factors made the conviction unsafe and unsatisfactory: the changed medical evidence concerning the timing of an injury; the appellant’s lack of legal representation at trial, whether or not there had been a valid waiver; the absence of a good-character direction despite the appellant having no previous convictions; and a later contrasting ruling excluding a similar confession. A standard confession direction did not sufficiently address the need for extreme caution in the light of the changed medical evidence.
5. The later ruling was not treated as an inconsistent verdict because it arose in different proceedings, but the stark contrast could properly be considered as a factor undermining the safety of the conviction. Grounds concerning constitutional rights to representation were not considered.

• Privy Council allowed the appeal and advised that the conviction be quashed.
• Court of Appeal of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas dismissed the appeal on 18 February 2013 and affirmed the conviction and sentence.
• Trial court admitted the confession after a voir dire, convicted the appellant of armed robbery in March 2012 and sentenced him to 15 years’ imprisonment.