An Overview on Admission
Posted on Sunday, December 16, 2012 by shila
An admisson was defined in S.17(1) of the
Evidence Act 1950 that provided admission is a statement, oral o documentary
which suggests any inference as to any fact in issue or relevant fact and which
is made by any of the persons and under the circumstances hereinafter
mentioned. Briefly, the ingredients can be seen as follows:
The whole idea of
admission incorporated in the Evidence Act can be seen as below:
Categories of
Persons Making Admission:
An admission is a
substantive evidence of the fact admitted and is admissible as exception to the
hearsay rule. Sarkar On
Evidence (14 Ed) Vol 1 says
at page 309:
"The ordinary ideaof hearsay is what is heard out of court from a
non-witness and admissions are therefore generally treated as exception to the
hearsay rule. Admissions are not, however open to all the objections
applicable to hearsay testimony. It is true that they are unsworn statements
made out of court like hearsay testimony, but they are statements not of third
persons but of a part to the proceeding and for the reason stated about what a
party said against his interest may be presumed to be true."
In civil cases, an admission is not
relevant and admissible if there is an agreement that such admission should not
be given as evidence in court. Normally, at the top of a letter, it will be put
words "without prejudice" or it will be stated that the letter is
without prejudice to the rights of the party. It is because the court encourage
the parties to settle the dispute outside court, so as a medium of protection,
any admission made by the parties on a without prejudice basis will not be
admissible. According to the case of Walker
v Wilsher, the words 'without prejudice' mean 'without prejudice to the
position of the writer of the letter if the terms he proposes are not
accepted'.
The principle laid down by the case of AB
Chew Investments Pte Ltd v Lim Tjoen Kong can be seen as stated below:
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1 Response to "An Overview on Admission"
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Esther Tan Says....In admission, section 21 of Evidence Act should be read subject to section 113 of Criminal Procedure Code. Even though section 21 provides that an admission can be used against the maker of the statement but the recent amendment to section 113 Criminal Procedure Code provides that any statement made to police officer is only admissible by the defence in support of his defence. It is not admissible to be used by the prosecution against the accused. Thus, this new amendment has put limit to prosecution making it harder for prosecution to admit statement made by the accused to the police officer after arrest. Otherwise, it will be easy for prosecution to just use any statement made by accused to police officer during course of investigation to convict the accused. I believe this is also to protect the accused's right.
In my opinion, with the recent amendment to Criminal Procedure Code, it will be better if Evidence Act is amended too so that both statutes will tally with one another as section 21 of Evidence Act 1950 should be read subject to section 113 of Criminal Procedure Code. However, Evidence Act has yet to be amended to include exceptions stated in section 113 Criminal Procedure Code in section 21 of Evidence Act.
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