The court rejected a submission that, in a civil claim, sections 76 to 78 PACE precluded reliance altogether upon any evidence by an interview undertaken without a prior caution. Those exclusionary provisions were confined, the Court made clear, to criminal proceedings. However: ‘1. Were the court to be satisfied that answers had been obtained by oppression, the weight to be accorded to evidence may nonetheless be reduced so that very little, if any weight could be accorded to it.
2. oppression requires the exercise of authority or power in a burdensome, harsh, or wrongful manner; unjust or cruel treatment of subjects, inferiors, etc, or the imposition of unreasonable or unjust burdens ‘in circumstances which almost always entail some impropriety by the interrogator’.
Citations:
[1996] EWCA Civ 707
Statutes:
Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 76 77 878
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Poonam v Secretary of State for The Home Department QBD 18-Jul-2013
The claimant sought damages, alleging: ‘oppressive questioning, unlawful arrest, unlawful detention, unlawful search of her home, theft and / or failure to secure her home premises, and the wrongful declaration by the UKBA that she was an illegal . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Evidence
Updated: 06 May 2022; Ref: scu.513549
