11 photograph – or the metal box in this case).8 Thus, where such evidence was discovered as result of an involuntary admission by an accused, it would be allowed because of the circumstantial guarantee of its reliability and relevance to guilt – the principal purpose of a criminal trial.9 As a rule, evidence relating to the ‘fruit of the poisonous tree’ was not excluded. [23] There was however some resistance to this line of reasoning deriving from normative considerations. In S v Sheehama Grosskopf JA stated that it was a basic principle of our law that an accused cannot be coerced into making a self-incriminating statement. He thus held that s 218(2) of The Criminal Procedure Act 51 of 1977 did not authorise evidence of forced pointings out even though it arguably did so.10 And in S v Khumalo11 Thirion J said that involuntary statements made by accused persons are inadmissible against them, not only because they are untrustworthy as evidence but ‘also, and perhaps mainly, because in a civilized society it is vital that persons in custody or charged with offences should not be subjected to ill-treatment or improper pressure in order to extract confessions’.12 With the advent of the new constitutional order looming Van Heerden JA, in S v January; Prokureur-Generaal, Natal v Khumalo, confirmed this line of thinking when he observed that there has ‘in this century . . . rightly been a marked shift in the justification for excluding . . . involuntary confessions and admissions, and it is now firmly established in English law that an important reason is 8 S v M 2002 (2) SACR 411 para 31. R v Samhando 1943 AD 608; R v Duetsimi 1950 (3) SA 674 (A). 10 1991(2) SA 860 (A); Section 218(2) provides: ‘Evidence may be admitted at criminal proceedings that anything was pointed out by an accused appearing at such proceedings or that any fact or thing was discovered in consequence of information given by such accused, notwithstanding that such pointing out or information forms part of a confession or statement which by law is not admissible in evidence against such accused at such proceedings.’ 11 1992 (SACR) 411 (N). 12 Quoting Lord Hailsham in Wong Kam-ming v The Queen [1980] AC 247 (PC) at 261. 9