These two provisions together fly in the face of well-settled Supreme Court interpretations of the Fifth Amendment and greatly undermine the presumption of innocence upon which our American system of justice is founded.
Confessions Are Inherently Suspect.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the burden of proving voluntariness, by a mere preponderance of the evidence, is on the prosecution. It creates a presumption of voluntariness, and thus admissibility, in place of the current presumption to the contrary. These two proposals would eviscerate the presumption of innocence, substituting an inquisitorial system. Ours is the accusatorial as opposed to the inquisitorial system. Such has been the characteristic of Anglo-American criminal justice since it freed itself from practices borrowed by the Star Chamber. . . .