Section 34, Rule 130 of the Rules of Evidence provides that a confession, that is, “[t]he declaration of an accused acknowledging his or her guilt of the offense charged, or of any offense necessarily included therein, may be given in evidence against him or her.”
Section 34 does not refer to a judicial confession but an extrajudicial confession. Since a confession is but an admission of a greater degree, that is, an admission of the guilt of the offense charged or of any offense necessarily included therein, it is admissible only against the accused who made the confession. An accused’s confession is not admissible against his co-accused.1 The reason is not only because the confession is hearsay, but also because the admission of the confession against a co-accused would violate his constitutional right of confrontation.
Jurisprudence has, however, laid down an exception to the rule that confessions are not admissible against the other accused: the so-called doctrine of interlocking confessions. Under this doctrine, extrajudicial confessions independently made without collusion which are identical with each other in their essential details and are corroborated by other evidence on record are admissible as circumstantial evidence against the person implicated — even if he did not make a confession himself — to show the probability of the latter’s actual participation in the commission of the crime.2
Illustration. A, B, C, and D were charged with the murder of X. A, B, and C independently made extrajudicial confessions in which they stated that D had instigated the assault against X. The confessions of A, B, and C were corroborated by W who testified that D was one of those who assaulted X by hitting him with a belt buckle. Under the doctrine of interlocking confessions, the confessions of A, B, and C are admissible as circumstantial evidence against D.3
The evident reason for the doctrine is the perceived trustworthiness of confessions which jibe with each other. The justification is quite arguable. The issue is not the reliability or trustworthiness of the interlocking confessions but the constitutional right of an accused to confront the witness against him. Confessions, by their nature, are testimonial4 in character and hence clearly implicate the accused’s constitutional right of confrontation. Even the argument of trustworthiness is tenuous. Confessions deserve special skepticism because they are often made to curry favor with the prosecution or to downplay the confessant’s role in the crime.
To label the interlocking confessions as circumstantial evidence is to call a spade an axe. It does not detract from the fact that the interlocking confessions are being offered mainly to prove the truth of the fact asserted therein, in the given illustration, that D instigated the assault against X.
The doctrine of interlocking confessions is a juridical construct. It has no basis from the text of Section 34, Rule 130 or any other provision of the Rules of Evidence.
The committee which drafted the 1989 Rules on Evidence submitted to the Supreme Court an amendment of the rule on confession explicitly providing that a confession may be given in evidence only against the confessant and thus abandoning the doctrine of interlocking confessions. However, this amendment was rejected by the majority of the Court which deleted “only.”5
At any rate, even without “only,” the proper reading of Section 34 of Rule 130 is that the confession of an accused is not admissible against another person. To say otherwise would be to run roughshod over the hearsay rule and more importantly against an accused’s constitutional right of confrontation. It is high time that courts unshackle themselves from the doctrine of interlocking confessions.
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- People v. Alegre, G.R. No. L-30423, 7 November 1979. Section 34 of Rule 130 is unnecessary since it is simply a reiteration of the rule on admission under Section 27. ↩︎
- People v. Molleda, 86 SCRA 667, 701 (1978). ↩︎
- Illustration based on People v. Molleda, 86 SCRA 667 (1978). ↩︎
- See Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004). ↩︎
- JOSE Y. FERIA, REVISED RULES ON EVIDENCE 19 (1989). ↩︎
