21 MARCH 1931, Page 3

Confessions of Murder On Monday in the House of Commons

the Home Secretary, on being questioned about alleged confessions by Rouse, said that he had no power to interfere with newspapers which published such stories, but that the Home Office would keep to its own rule of not officially publishing any confession. The rule is a wise one. If one confession was published all confessions would have to be published in answer to a demand that " doubts should be removed." The failure to produce a con- fession would then merely increase doubt, not because the value of the evidence at the trial had been in the least impaired, but because public sentiment would work in that way. And confessions might only too easily incriminate other people, very often quite unjustly.

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