Source: http://www.joeldufresnecase.com/supreme-court-opinions-federal/criminal-opinions/malloy-v-hogan
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 20:46:42+00:00

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it is possible that some of the personal rights safeguarded by the first eight Amendments [p5] against National action may also be safeguarded against state action because a denial of them would be a denial of due process of law.
. . . the Fourth Amendment's right of privacy has been declared enforceable against the States through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth. . . .
We hold today that the Fifth Amendment's exception from compulsory self-incrimination is also protected by the Fourteenth Amendment against abridgment by the States. Decisions of the Court since Twining and Adamson have departed from the contrary view expressed in those cases. We discuss first the decisions which forbid the use of coerced confessions in state criminal prosecutions.
[i]n criminal trials in the courts of the United States, wherever a question arises whether a confession is incompetent because not voluntary, the issue is controlled by that portion of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States commanding that no person "shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself."
free and voluntary: that is, [it] must not be extracted by any sort of threats or violence, nor obtained by any direct or implied promises, however slight, nor by the exertion of any improper influence. . . .
Id. at 542-543; see also Hardy v. United States, 186 U.S. 224, 229; Wan v. United States, 266 U.S. 1, 14; Smith v. United States, 348 U.S. 147, 150. In other words, the person must not have been compelled to incriminate himself. We have held inadmissible even a confession secured by so mild a whip as the refusal, under certain circumstances, to allow a suspect to call his wife until he confessed. Haynes v. Washington, 373 U.S. 503.
The marked shift to the federal standard in state cases began with Lisenba v. California, 314 U.S. 219, where the Court spoke of the accused's "free choice to admit, to deny or to refuse to answer." Id. at 241. See Ashcraft v. Tennessee, 322 U.S. 143; Malinski v. New York, 324 U.S. 401; Spano v. New York, 360 U.S. 315; Lynumn v. Illinois, 372 U.S. 528; Haynes v. Washington, 373 U.S. 503. The shift reflects recognition that the American system of criminal prosecution is accusatorial, not inquisitorial, and that the Fifth Amendment privilege is its essential mainstay. Rogers v. Richmond, 365 U.S. 534, [p8] 541. Governments, state and federal, are thus constitutionally compelled to establish guilt by evidence independently and freely secured, and may not, by coercion, prove a charge against an accused out of his own mouth. Since the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits the States from inducing a person to confess through "sympathy falsely aroused," Spano v. New York, supra, at 323, or other like inducement far short of "compulsion by torture," Haynes v. Washington, supra, it follows a fortiori that it also forbids the States to resort to imprisonment, as here, to compel him to answer questions that might incriminate him. The Fourteenth Amendment secures against state invasion the same privilege that the Fifth Amendment guarantees against federal infringement -- the right of a person to remain silent unless he chooses to speak in the unfettered exercise of his own will, and to suffer no penalty, as held in Twining, for such silence.
Breaking into a house and opening boxes and drawers are circumstances of aggravation; but any forcible and compulsory extortion of a man's own testimony or of his private papers to be used as evidence to convict him of crime or to forfeit his goods is within [p9] the condemnation of [those Amendments]. . . .
We find that, as to the Federal Government, the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, and, as to the States, the freedom from unconscionable invasions of privacy and the freedom from convictions based upon coerced confessions, do enjoy an "intimate relation" in their perpetuation of "principles of humanity and civil liberty [secured] . . . only after years of struggle," Bram v. United States, 168 U.S. 532, 543-544. . . . The philosophy of each Amendment and of each freedom is complementary to, although not dependent upon, that of the other in its sphere of influence -- the very least that, together, they assure in either sphere is that no man is to be convicted on unconstitutional evidence.
367 U.S. at 656-657. In thus returning to the Boyd view that the privilege is one of the "principles of a free government," 116 U.S. at 632, [n7] Mapp necessarily repudiated the Twining concept of the privilege as a mere rule of evidence "best defended not as an unchangeable principle of universal justice, but as a law proved by experience to be expedient." 211 U.S. at 113.
The respondent Sheriff concedes in his brief that, under our decisions, particularly those involving coerced [p10] confessions, "the accusatorial system has become a fundamental part of the fabric of our society and, hence, is enforceable against the States." [n8] The State urges, however, that the availability of the federal privilege to a witness in a state inquiry is to be determined according to a less stringent standard than is applicable in a federal proceeding. We disagree. We have held that the guarantees of the First Amendment, Gitlow v. New York, supra; Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296; Louisiana ex rel. Gremillion v. NAACP, 366 U.S. 293, the prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures of the Fourth Amendment, Ker v. California, 374 U.S. 23, and the right to counsel guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment, Gideon v. Wainwright, supra, are all to be enforced against the States under the Fourteenth Amendment according to the same standards that protect those personal rights against federal encroachment. In the coerced confession cases, involving the policies of the privilege itself, there has been no suggestion that a confession might be considered coerced if used in a federal, but not a state, tribunal. The Court thus has rejected the notion that the Fourteenth Amendment applies to the States only a "watered-down, subjective version of the individual [p11] guarantees of the Bill of Rights," Ohio ex rel. Eaton v. Price, 364 U.S. 263, 275 (dissenting opinion). If Cohen v. Hurley, 366 U.S. 117, and Adamson v. California, supra, suggest such an application of the privilege against self-incrimination, that suggestion cannot survive recognition of the degree to which the Twining view of the privilege has been eroded. What is accorded is a privilege of refusing to incriminate one's self, and the feared prosecution may be by either federal or state authorities. Murphy v. Waterfront Comm'n, post, p. 52. It would be incongruous to have different standards determine the validity of a claim of privilege based on the same feared prosecution depending on whether the claim was asserted in a state or federal court. Therefore, the same standards must determine whether an accused's silence in either a federal or state proceeding is justified.
The privilege afforded not only extends to answers that would in themselves support a conviction . . . , but likewise embraces those which would furnish a link in the chain of evidence needed to prosecute. . . . [I]f the witness, upon interposing his claim, were required to prove the hazard . . . , he would be compelled to surrender the very protection which the privilege is designed to guarantee. To sustain the privilege, it need only be evident from the implications of the question, in the setting in which it is [p12] asked, that a responsive answer to the question or an explanation of why it cannot be answered might be dangerous because injurious disclosure could result.
"perfectly clear, from a careful consideration of all the circumstances in the case, that the witness is mistaken, and that the answer[s] cannot possibly have such tendency" to incriminate.
341 U.S. at 488. The State of Connecticut argues that the Connecticut courts properly applied the federal standards to the facts of this case. We disagree.
The investigation in the course of which petitioner was questioned began when the Superior Court in Hartford County appointed the Honorable Ernest A. Inglis, formerly Chief Justice of Connecticut, to conduct an inquiry into whether there was reasonable cause to believe that crimes, including gambling, were being committed in Hartford County. Petitioner appeared on January 16 and 25, 1961, and, in both instances, he was asked substantially the same questions about the circumstances surrounding his arrest and conviction for pool selling in late 1959. The questions which petitioner refused to answer may be summarized as follows: (1) for whom did he work on September 11, 1959; (2) who selected and paid his counsel in connection with his arrest on that date and subsequent conviction; (3) who selected and paid his bondsman; (4) who paid his fine; (5) what was the name of the tenant of the apartment in which he was arrested, and (6) did he know John Bergoti. The Connecticut Supreme Court of Errors ruled that the answers to these questions could not tend to incriminate him, because the defenses of double jeopardy and the running of the one-year statute of limitations on misdemeanors would defeat any prosecution growing out of his answers to the first [p13] five questions. As for the sixth question, the court held that petitioner's failure to explain how a revelation of his relationship with Bergoti would incriminate him vitiated his claim to the protection of the privilege afforded by state law.
Hoffman v. United States, 341 U.S. at 486-487; see Singleton v. United States, 343 U.S. 944.
While MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS joins the opinion of the Court, he also adheres to his concurrence in Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 345.
1. In both cases, the question was whether comment upon the failure of an accused to take the stand in his own defense in a state prosecution violated the privilege. It was assumed, but not decided, in both cases that such comment in a federal prosecution for a federal offense would infringe the provision of the Fifth Amendment that "no person . . . shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself." For other statements by the Court that the Fourteenth Amendment does not apply the federal privilege in state proceedings, see Cohen v. Hurley, 366 U.S. 117, 127-129; Snyder v. Massachusetts, 291 U.S. 97, 105.
2. Ten Justices have supported this view. See Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335, 346 (opinion of MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS). The Court expressed itself as unpersuaded to this view in In re Kemmler, 136 U.S. 436, 448-449; McElvaine v. Brush, 142 U.S. 155, 158-159; Maxwell v. Dow, 176 U.S. 581, 597-598; Twining v. New Jersey, supra, p. 96. See Spies v. Illinois, 123 U.S. 131. Decisions that particular guarantees were not safeguarded against state action by the Privileges and Immunities Clause or other provision of the Fourteenth Amendment are: United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542, 551; Prudential Ins. Co. v. Cheek, 259 U.S. 530, 543 (First Amendment); Presser v. Illinois, 116 U.S. 252, 265 (Second Amendment); Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383, 398 (Fourth Amendment); Hurtado v. California, 110 U.S. 516, 538 (Fifth Amendment requirement of grand jury indictments); Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319, 328 (Fifth Amendment double jeopardy); Maxwell v. Dow, supra, at 595 (Sixth Amendment jury trial); Walker v. Sauvinet, 92 U.S. 90, 92 (Seventh Amendment jury trial); In re Kemmler, supra; McElvaine v. Brush, supra; O'Neil v. Vermont, 144 U.S. 323, 332 (Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment).
3. In Barron v. Baltimore, 7 Pet. 243, decided before the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, Chief Justice Marshall, speaking for the Court, held that this right was not secured against state action by the Fifth Amendment's provision: "Nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."
4. E.g., Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652, 666 (speech and press); Lovell v. City of Griffin, 303 U.S. 444, 450 (speech and press); New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (speech and press); Staub v. City of Baxley, 355 U.S. 313, 321 (speech); Grosjean v. American Press Co., 297 U.S. 233, 244 (press); Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296, 303 (religion); De Jonge v. Oregon, 299 U.S. 353, 364 (assembly); Shelton v. Tucker, 364 U.S. 479, 486 (association); Louisiana ex rel. Gremillion v. NAACP, 366 U.S. 293, 296 (association); NAACP v. Button, 371 U.S. 415 (association and speech); Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen v. Virginia ex rel. Virginia State Bar, 377 U.S. 1 (association).
5. See Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U.S. 25, 27-28; Elkins v. United States, 364 U.S. 206, 213.
6. See also Robinson v. California, 370 U.S. 660, 666, which, despite In re Kemmler, supra; McElvaine v. Brush, supra; O'Neil v. Vermont, supra, made applicable to the States the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishments.
. . . any compulsory discovery by extorting the party's oath . . . to convict him of crime . . . is contrary to the principles of a free government. It is abhorrent to the instincts of an Englishman; it is abhorrent to the instincts of an American. It may suit the purposes of despotic power, but it cannot abide the pure atmosphere of political liberty and personal freedom.
I believe the Fifth Amendment is, and has been through this period of crisis, an expression of the moral striving of the community. It has been a reflection of our common conscience, a symbol of the America which stirs our hearts.
The Fifth Amendment Today 73 (1955).
Underlying the decisions excluding coerced confessions is the implicit assumption that an accused is privileged against incriminating himself, either in the jail house, the grand jury room, or on the witness stand in a public trial. . . .
. . . It is fundamentally inconsistent to suggest, as the Court's opinions now suggest, that the State is entirely free to compel an accused to incriminate himself before a grand jury or at the trial, but cannot do so in the police station. Frank recognition of the fact that the Due Process Clause prohibits the States from enforcing their laws by compelling the accused to confess, regardless of where such compulsion occurs, would not only clarify the principles involved in confession cases, but would assist the States significantly in their efforts to comply with the limitations placed upon them by the Fourteenth Amendment.
in determining whether the witness really apprehends danger in answering a question, the judge cannot permit himself to be skeptical; rather must he be acutely aware that, in the deviousness of crime and its detection, incrimination may be approached and achieved by obscure and unlikely lines of inquiry.

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