Does the court really concern with the manner that the evidence is obtained?

    "Whether the courts should refuse to entertain evidence because it has been obtained by the party    tendering it in an illegal or improper manner is a question principally of policy, to which no answer is to be found in the laws of evidence as such"- Peter Murphy

The issue here is, whether the court should admit the evidence as admissible to prove the offence charged/claim, and leave the aggrieved party to his remedy OR whether the court should act as 'watchdogs' and should decline to allow a party guilty to profit by it?

Firstly, we look at the United States position on this issue. As we know, United States focus on human right issue, and of course it includes right of an accused/defendant. The constitutionally entrenched rights of the defendant require the exclusion of evidence obtained in violation of any of the defendants' fundamental constitutional right. For example, if evidence is seized during a unlawful search, it is contrary to the Fourth Amendment right to be protected against unlawful search and seizure. In such circumstances, the court must as a matter of law exclude the evidences. 

In Malaysia, the courts tend to follow the principle in England. In Kiruma v The Queen, the court held that the test to be applied in considering whether the evidence is admissible is whether it is relevant to the matters in issue. If it is, it is admissible and the court is not concerned with how evidence was obtained. In R v Sang, the defendant was charged with conspiracy to utter counterfeit United States banknotes. The defence counsel claimed that he had been induced by an informer, acting on the instruction of the police, to commit an offence that he would not committed otherwise. Lord Diplock in this case stated under English System of Criminal Justice, it does not give rise to any discretion on the part of the judge himself to acquit the accused or to direct the jury to do so, notwithstanding that he is guilty of the offence. This was later followed by the Malaysia case How Poh Sun v PP.

Another Malaysia case which illustrated this issue is Saminathan v PP, where Aitken J held that the legality or illegality of a person's arrest does not concern the court which is trying him and, in respect of certain documents that were seized by the police during the illegal search of the appellant's room, that the court was only concern with the relevance of the documents seized and not with the manner in which the police obtained. This principle was also affirmed in the case PP v Gan Ah Bee.

In conclusion  Malaysia court tends to take into consideration the relevancy of the evidences rather than the manner evidences obtained. However much the judge may dislike the way in which a particular piece of evidence was obtained before the proceeding, if it is admissible evidence probative of the accused's guilt, it is not part of a judge judicial function to exclude it.