Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/372/528
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 07:05:18+00:00

Document:
The petitioner was tried in the Criminal Court of Cook County, Illinois, on an indictment charging her with the unlawful possession and sale of marijuana. She was convicted and sentenced to the penitentiary for 'not less than ten nor more than eleven years.' The judgment of conviction was affirmed on appeal by the Illinois Supreme Court. 21 Ill.2d 63, 171 N.E.2d 17. We granted certiorari 370 U.S. 933, 82 S.Ct. 1576, 8 L.Ed.2d 805. For the reasons stated in this opinion, we hold that the petitioner's trial did not meet the demands of due process of law, and we accordingly set aside the judgment before us.
On January 17, 1959, three Chicago police officers arrested James Zeno for unlawful possession of narcotics. They took him to a district police station. There they told him that if he 'would set somebody up for them, they would go light' on him. He agreed to 'cooperate' and telephoned the petitioner, telling her that he was coming over to her apartment. The officers and Zeno then went to the petitioner's apartment house, and Zeno went upstairs to the third floor while the officers waited below. Some time later, variously estimated as from five to 20 minutes, Zeno emerged from the petitioner's third floor apartment with a package containing a substance later determined to be marijuana. The officers took the package and told Zeno to return to the petitioner's apartment on the pretext that he had left his glasses there. When the petitioner walked out into the hallway in response to Zeno's call, one of the officers seized her and placed her under arrest. 1 The officers and Zeno then entered the petitioner's apartment. 2 The petitioner at first denied she had sold the marijuana to Zeno, insisting that while he was in her apartment Zeno had merely repaid a loan. After further conversations with the officers, however, she told them that she had sold the marijuana to Zeno.
'* * * The only reason I had for admitting it to the police was the hope of saving myself from going to jail and being taken away from my children. The statement I made to the police after they promised that they would intercede for me, the statements admitting the crime, were false.
'* * * While I was talking to her in the bedroom, she told me that she had children and she had taken the children over to her mother-in-law, to keep her children.
'Q. Did you or anybody in your presence indicate or suggest or say to her that her children would be taken away from her if she didn't do what you asked her to do?
'Witness: I believe there was some mention of her children being taken away from her if she was arrested.
'The Court: By whom? Who made mention of it?
'The Witness: I believe Officer Bryson made that statement and I think I made the statement at some time during the course of our discussion that her children could be taken from her. We did not say if she cooperated they wouldn't be taken. I don't know whether Kobar said that to her or not. I don't recall if Kobar said that to her or not.
'I asked her who the clothing belonged to. She said they were her children's. I asked how many she had and she said 2. I asked her where they were or who took care of them. She said the children were over at the mother's or mother-in-law. I asked her how did she take care of herself and she said she was on ADC. I told her that if we took her into the station and charged her with the offense, that the ADC would probably be cut off and also that she would probably lose custody of her children. That was not before I said if she cooperated, it would go light on her. It was during the same conversation.
It is thus abundantly clear that the petitioner's oral confession was made only after the police had told her that state financial aid for her infant children would be cut off, and her children taken from her, if she did not 'cooperate.' These threats were made while she was encircled in her apartment by three police officers and a twice convicted felon who had purportedly 'set her up.' There was no friend or adviser to whom she might turn. She had had no previous experience with the criminal law, and had no reason not to believe that the police had ample power to carry out their threats.
We think it clear that a confession made under such circumstances must be deemed not voluntary, but coerced. That is the teaching of our cases. We have said that the question in each case is whether the defendant's will was overborne at the time he confessed. Chambers v. Florida, 309 U.S. 227, 60 S.Ct. 472, 84 L.Ed. 716; Watts v. Indiana, 338 U.S. 49, 52, 53, 69 S.Ct. 1347, 1348, 1349, 93 L.Ed. 1801; Leyra v. Denno, 347 U.S. 556, 558, 74 S.Ct. 716, 717, 98 L.Ed. 948. If so, the confession cannot be deemed 'the product of a rational intellect and a free will.' Blackburn v. Alabama, 361 U.S. 199, 208, 80 S.Ct. 274, 280, 4 L.Ed.2d 242. See also Spano v. People of State of New York, 360 U.S. 315, 79 S.Ct. 1202, 3 L.Ed.2d 1265; Ashcraft v. Tennessee, 322 U.S. 143, 64 S.Ct. 921, 88 L.Ed. 1192; and see particularly, harris v. South Carolina, 338 U.S. 68, 70, 69 S.Ct. 1354, 1355, 93 L.Ed. 1815.
In this case counsel for the State of Illinois has conceded, at least for purposes of argument, that the totality of the circumstances disclosed by the record must be deemed to have combined to produce an impellingly coercive effect upon the petitioner at the time she told the officers she had sold marijuana to Zeno. But counsel for the State argues that we should nonetheless affirm the judgment before us upon either of two alternative grounds. It is contended first that the petitioner did not properly assert or preserve her federal constitutional claim in accord with established rules of Illinois procedure, and that her conviction therefore rests upon an adequate and independent foundation of state law. Secondly, it is urged that the petitioner's conviction 'does not rest in whole or in any part upon petitioner's confession.' We find both of these contentions without validity.
It is true that the record in this case does not show that the petitioner explicitly asserted her federal constitutional claim in the trial court. And it is said that in Illinois the procedural rule is settled that where a constitutional claim which is based not upon the alleged unconstitutionality of a statute, but upon the facts of a particular case, is not clearly and appropriately raised in the trial court, the claim will not be considered on appeal by the Supreme Court of Illinois. In other words, such a claim of constitutional right, it is said, must be asserted in the trial court or it will be deemed upon appellate review to have been waived. People v. Touhy, 397 Ill. 19, 72 N.E.2d 827.
The State's contention that the petitioner's conviction did not rest in any part upon her confession is quite without merit. The case was tried by the court without a jury. The record shows that twice during the trial the petitioner's counsel moved to strike the testimony of the police officers as to the petitioner's oral statement to them. On the first occasion the trial judge reserved a ruling on the motion 'until the close of the State's case.' When the motion was renewed, the record states that '(t)he motion to strike was denied.' Thus the record affirmatively shows that the evidence of the petitioner's confession was admitted and considered by the trial court.
'A review of the record does indicate, however, that strong suggestions of leniency were made to defendant subsequent to her arrest and prior to her admissions. Even in the absence of defendant's statements, there is clear proof by Zeno and the police officers that defendant gave Zeno a package containing marijuana. Upon a review of the entire record, we are convinced that the evidence fully supports the judgment of the trial court. * * *' 21 Ill.2d, at 68, 171 N.E.2d, at 20.
While this statement is not free from ambiguity, we take it to express the view that even if the testimony as to the petitioner's confession was erroneously admitted, the error was a harmless one in the light of other evidence of the petitioner's guilt. 4 That is an impermissible doctrine. As was said in Payne v. Arkansas, 'this Court has uniformly held that even though there may have been sufficient evidence, apart from the coerced confession, to support a judgment of conviction, the admission in evidence, over objection, of the coerced confession vitiates the judgment because it violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.' 356 U.S. 560, at 568, 78 S.Ct. 844, 850, 2 L.Ed.2d 975. See Spano v. People of State of New York, 360 U.S. 315, 324, 79 S.Ct. 1202, 1207, 3 L.Ed.2d 1265; Watts v. Indiana, 338 U.S. 49, 50, n. 2, 69 S.Ct. 1347, 1348, 93 L.Ed. 1801; Haley v. Ohio, 332 U.S. 596, 599, 68 S.Ct. 302, 303, 92 L.Ed. 224.
Judgment set aside and case remanded with directions.
Her testimony on this subject was as follows: 'On January 17th Zeno called me. He owed me money, $23.00. I had loaned him this money about three months previously. He said he was being evicted and had money en route from his sister and if I could lend him the money, he could pay his rent; and I haven't seen him since. That was three months previously. On this day he told me on the phone he was sorry he had not been around to pay the money but he had been in pretty bad shape. But now he had come into some money and would come and pay me.
'* * * On that day I did not give to Zeno, nor did Mr. Zeno ask me in the telephone conversation in which he said he was going to pay me the money he owed me, he did not say anything about having a can ready for him or anything like that.
It is difficult, however, to perceive how the admission of evidence of the confession could be considered harmless. The only other evidence of substance against the petitioner was that given by Zeno, a twice convicted felon who testified that he was eager in his own self-interest to cooperate with the police by 'setting up' someone. While it was undisputed that Zeno was in possession of the package of marijuana when he emerged from the petitioner's apartment, it was far from clear that Zeno obtained the marijuana from the petitioner. Zeno was out of the police officers' sight for a period of from five to 20 minutes, and there were other apartments in the building where Zeno might have obtained the package.

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