Kuwait Court of Cassation principle number 47

Summary: - The challenged judgment did not rely, in convicting the appellant, on his confession before the court of first instance. A challenge in this respect has no object. Reason for this. - Reliance in conviction on the appellant’s confession without questioning him about it does not impair the judgment’s soundness. Condition: the judgment must not attach to it the legal effect of a confession by treating it alone as sufficient evidence for conviction, but must use it to support other evidence. Rule: Since the reasons of the challenged judgment show that it did not rely, in convicting the appellant, on his confession before the court of first instance, his challenge in this respect is inadmissible because it has no object in the challenged judgment’s ruling. Moreover, it is established that a judgment’s soundness is not impaired by its reliance—among the matters on which it relied—in conviction on the appellant’s confession without the court having questioned him about it, provided it did not attach to it the legal effect of a confession, namely treating it alone as sufficient evidence for conviction, but rather derived from it support for the other evidence upon which the court relied in forming its conviction concerning the correct account of the facts of the case as it accepted them. Accordingly, the appellant’s challenge concerning the judgment’s reliance on his confession without questioning him about it is, as a whole, unsound.