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Swedish criminal law implement something that could be considered a partial application of that idea, but instead of outlawing interrogation, any admission of guilt is only to be considered as part of evidence in a case.

Thus when the courts do their work correctly, it's almost impossible to be convicted on your admissions alone, especially for more serious crimes.

There are however instances where this has still happened, indicating that maybe confeso of guilt should not be admissible as evidence at all, though material evidence found through interrogation probably should.



" any admission of guilt is only to be considered as part of evidence in a case."

This makes sense to me. Someone confessing to a crime is certainly a strong indicator they did it but it's not 100%.


In Sweden any evidence is admissible, and it's up to the judge(s) to decide if and how to weigh it.


Can the police lie in Sweden?

Afaik they aren't allowed to in Denmark... Sure, you can tell a man ready to jump off a ledge anything.

But in an interrogation, the police can't lie, or try to extract a confession.

There are so many differences.


I assume swedish courts use juries?

Regardless of the technical rules about how confessions should be treated, a jury will always overvalue a confession. The same applies to eyewitness testimony, which is basically useless but juries accept it as undeniable truth.

The game of prosecution is not "prove the accused is guilty". The game is "convince these random people that the accused is guilty". The later is a decent approximation of the former but I wish we had something better.


Have there been any cases of someone being exonerated for lack of evidence despite pleading to be arrested for their bloody cannibalistic rape spree?


Since Sweden has already been mentioned in this subthread... The case of Sture Bergwall / Thomas Quick comes quite close.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sture_Bergwall


Optimizing your justice system for bloody cannibalistic rape sprees seems unwise.


That’s true in the US too.




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