The appellant was convicted of aggravated robbery. The evidence against him was that of the complainant, who subsequently alleged to have identified him in a police station, and of a police officer to whom the appellant was alleged to have made a confession. Objection was taken to the confession on the ground that the appellant was forced to sign a statement not made by him; the judge ruled that no trial within a trial was necessary.
Held:
(i) Where any question arises as to the voluntariness of a statement or any part of it, including the signature, then because voluntariness is, as a matter of law, a condition precedent to the admissibility of the statement , this issue must be decided as a preliminary one by means of a trial within a trial. In any other case the issue is simply one of the issues in the trial.
(ii) There is great danger of honest mistake in identification, particularly where the accused was not previously known to the witness. The question is not one of credibility in the sense of truthfulness, but of reliability.
(iii) The greatest care should be taken to test the identification. The witness should be asked, for instance, by what features or unusual marks, if any, he alleges to recognise the accused, what was his build, what clothes he was wearing, and so on; and the circumstances in which the accused was observed - the state of the light, the opportunity for observation, the stress of the moment - should be carefully canvassed.
(iv) The adequacy of evidence of personal identification will depend on all the surrounding circumstances, and each case must be decided on its own merits.