R v Carbello

• Jurisdiction: Cayman Islands
• Judge: Graham-Perkins, M.
• Judgment Date: 24 April 1977
• Court: Grand Court (Cayman Islands)
• Date: 24 April 1977

R.

and

Carbello

Graham-Perkins, M.

Summary Court (Grand Court)

Evidence - Obtaining evidence by deception — Police Inspector friend of accused inducing belief that charge not to be pursued if accused produced evidence of offence is person in authority holding out promise of advantage — Subsequently confession or production of incriminatory material inadmissible.

Appearances:

S. Panton and D. Ritch for the Crown;

N. W Hill, Q.C. and C.S. Gill for the accused.

Graham-Perkins, M.

1 On Saturday, February 26th, 1977 the accused was in custody in a cell at Central Police Station at George Town. He had been placed there on the evening of Friday, February 25th by Cpl. Evon Parks on the advice of a doctor attached to the George Town Hospital to which institution he had been taken by Cpl. Parks as the result of certain apparently unusual behaviour on his part on a public road.

2 At about 11.20 a.m. on Saturday, February 26th, Chief Insp. Rudolph Evans, accompanied by Sgt. Rankine, went to the accused's cell and had a conversation with him. It does not appear that the inspector's visit to the accused's cell was prompted by invitation extended by the accused. At the end of the conversation during which the accused and the inspector enquired somewhat solicitously about each other's state of health, the latter asked the accused if he wished to talk about the events of the previous evening whereupon the accused said, “Yes, let's go some place where we can talk.” The two men proceeded to the inspector's office. They were alone, Sgt. Rankine having left them at some point prior to their entry into the inspector's office. In that office another conversation ensued.

3 The inspector told the accused that he had reason to believe that his behaviour on the previous evening resulted from his having taken drugs. To this assertion the accused made no response. It is not without some real significance that the accused, as he was entitled to do, remained silent in the face of this somewhat oblique accusation advanced by the inspector. Thereafter, the inspector said to the accused, and I quote his own words, “I told him that if he had in fact been using drugs on the evening before to let me know of his source of supply and to deliver up to me or to destroy in my presence and that of his family any drug that he may have had.” Immediately upon being so addressed by the inspector, the accused, in the words of the inspector, “got up from his seat and said: ‘Rudy, come, let's go to my home, but I do not want you to talk to Mrs. Helen, I will talk to her.’” At this point the inspector and the accused left the former's office and, with Sgt. Rankine, proceeded to the accused's home. I pause here to observe that Rudy is the name by which the inspector is addressed by his friends and, probably, his close associates. Mrs. Helen is, it appears, the adopted mother of the accused. On arrival at the home of the accused, and after one or two exchanges between him and Mrs. Helen, the accused took from behind a night table a bottle which he handed over to the inspector, saying: ‘That's it, Rudy.” Upon enquiry the accused said that this bottle contained cocaine, whereupon the inspector cautioned him. Thereafter, there followed a series of questions addressed to the accused by the inspector. These questions concerned the method by which the contents of the bottle had been used by the accused. The foregoing is, I hope, a faithful account of the circumstances leading to the arrest of, and the charge now preferred against, the accused. It is also in these circumstances that Mr. Hill objected to the admissibility, first, of the alleged confession by the accused as to his possession of cocaine and, secondly, of the evidence related to the discovery of the bottle in consequence of that confession.

4 It is desirable to note at this point that in cross-examination by Mr. Hill the inspector admitted that he had been “fairly friendly” with the accused for three to four years. In chief he said he had known the accused for 10 to 15 years. I am inclined to the view that the words “fairly friendly” used by the inspector to describe his relationship with the accused do not, in the context of his evidence, mean what reasonable men would normally understand those words to mean in the ordinary use of language. Indeed the inspector was constrained to admit that his friendship with the accused was, in his words, “for a cause.” It does not, however, appear that the accused ever had any reason to appreciate that what the inspector described as a “fairly friendly” relationship was, from the latter's point of view, no more than an expedient born of a desire to obtain information from the accused from time to time. Indeed, it is unmistakably clear that it was in this setting that Insp. Evans felt himself free to approach the accused in his cell on the morning of February 26th. The readiness with which the accused responded to the inspector's invitation to hand...