Kuwait Court of Cassation principle number 4

Summary: - A confession is an element of evidentiary inference. Its assessment and whether or not it was extracted by coercion are matters of fact. - The investigator conducts the investigation in the manner he considers conducive to achieving its purpose. - Prolongation of the investigation does not affect the soundness of the accused’s will, vitiate his confession, or constitute the equivalent of coercion invalidating a confession in fact or in law, so long as the appellant has not furnished evidence that the investigator deliberately prolonged it unnecessarily to exhaust him and influence his will. Assessment thereof is a matter of fact. - The Public Prosecutor’s issuance of a decision prohibiting the accused and members of his family from disposing of their property on a valid legal basis does not, in itself, constitute the equivalent of coercion invalidating a confession. The limit thereof. Rule: It is established that a confession in criminal matters is an element of evidentiary inference whose validity and probative value the trial court has complete freedom to assess. That court alone may also examine the validity of the accused’s allegation that the confession attributed to him was extracted through coercion. Once it ascertains that the confession is free of defects and is satisfied that it accords with truth and reality, it may rely upon it without review. It is also established that the investigator may conduct the investigation in the manner he considers conducive to achieving its purpose, namely elucidating the truth and assembling evidence of the accused’s guilt or innocence. The mere prolongation of the investigation to complete its procedures does not affect the soundness of the accused’s will, vitiate his confession, or constitute, in itself, the equivalent of coercion invalidating a confession in fact or in law, so long as the appellant has not furnished evidence that the investigator deliberately prolonged it unnecessarily to exhaust him and influence his will. Assessment thereof falls within the trial court’s discretionary authority. The first-instance judgment, whose grounds were adopted, supplemented, and amended by the challenged judgment, addressed the appellant’s plea that his confession was invalid because it resulted from torture and psychological coercion through the investigator’s deliberate interrogation of him for lengthy periods and the restraint of his property and his family. It rejected that plea on the basis of the court’s satisfaction that the appellant gave his detailed confession, recorded in the Public Prosecution investigations at the sessions of 12, 13, 25, 28, 30 January, and 2 October 1993, at a time and place where his freedom to defend himself was secured with all safeguards, and that he repeatedly affirmed in those investigations that the confession was given voluntarily, without pressure. Furthermore, the Public Prosecutor’s decision prohibiting the accused appellant and members of his family from disposing of their property rested on a valid legal basis and did not, in itself, constitute the equivalent of coercion invalidating his confession in fact or in law, so long as the authority of his task of conducting the procedure did not extend to inflicting physical or moral harm upon the accused. What the judgment stated as set out above was sufficient and sound in answering the appellant’s plea, and his complaint in this regard is therefore unsound.