"Confession is the Queen of Evidence"

Summary of the myth

This phrase is sometimes attributed to A.Ya. Vyshinsky (General Prosecutor of the USSR 1935-1939), sometimes he is credited with the fact that he allegedly summed up the theoretical basis for this thesis. As a rule, it is used as "indirect evidence" that in the Stalinist USSR, most of the "political" cases were based on confessions knocked out of the defendants, or to compare the criticized regime with the Stalinist one.

Examples of using

“For those to whom the name Vyshinsky does not mean anything, it is worth recalling that this chief director of the terrible political processes of the 30s successfully introduced the postulate into theory and practice: recognition is the queen of evidence.” “'Confession is the queen of evidence'. This catchphrase of Andrei Vyshinsky, the bloodiest prosecutor of Stalin's times, was perfectly learned by Israeli judges, and this simple principle is being applied with might and main. 

Reality

In fact, this phrase existed in ancient Rome. The queen of evidence (lat. - Regina probationum) - this is how in Roman law they called the confession of guilt by the defendant himself, which makes all other evidence, evidence and further investigative actions superfluous. 

Vyshinsky himself, as follows from his work "The Theory of Judicial Evidence in Soviet Law" , was of the opposite opinion (an excerpt from the text cited on Wikipedia is given):

“It would be a mistake to give the accused or the defendant, or rather, their explanations, more importance than they deserve... to such an extent that the recognition by the accused of being guilty was considered an immutable, unquestionable truth, even if this confession was wrested from him by torture, which at that time was almost the only procedural evidence, in any case considered the most serious evidence, the “queen of evidence” (regina probationum).

... This principle is completely unacceptable for Soviet law and judicial practice. Indeed, if other circumstances established in the case prove the guilt of the person brought to justice, then the consciousness of this person loses the value of evidence and in this respect becomes redundant. Its significance in this case can only be reduced to being a basis for assessing certain moral qualities of the defendant, for lowering or strengthening the punishment determined by the court.

Such an organization of the investigation, in which the testimony of the accused turns out to be the main and, even worse, the only foundations of the entire investigation, can jeopardize the whole case if the accused changes his testimony or refuses it.