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US Supreme Court Decisions On-Line> Volume 332 > ADAMSON V. CALIFORNIA, 332 U. S. 46 (1947)
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3. The constitution and statutes of California provide that, in any criminal case, whether the defendant testifies or not, his "failure to explain or to deny by his testimony any evidence or facts in the case against him may be commented upon" by the court and by counsel, and may be considered by the court or the jury. If the defendant pleads not guilty, but admits a charge that he has suffered a previous conviction, the charge of the previous conviction must not be read to the jury. However, if the defendant testifies, the previous conviction may, on cross-examination, be chanrobles.com-red
The appellant, Adamson, a citizen of the United States, was convicted, without recommendation for mercy, by a jury in a Superior Court of the State of California of chanrobles.com-red
murder in the first degree. [Footnote 1] After considering the same objections to the conviction that are pressed here, the sentence of death was affirmed by the Supreme Court of the state. 27 Cal.2d 478, 165 P.2d 3. Review of that judgment by this Court was sought and allowed under Judicial Code § 237; 28 U.S.C. § 344. [Footnote 2] The provisions of California law which were challenged in the state proceedings as invalid under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution are those of the state constitution and penal code in the margin. They permit the failure of a defendant to explain or to deny evidence against him to be commented upon by court and by counsel, and to be considered by court and jury. [Footnote 3] The defendant did not testify. As the trial court gave its instructions and the District Attorney argued the case in accordance with the constitutional and statutory provisions just referred to, we have chanrobles.com-red
In the first place, appellant urges that the provision of the Fifth Amendment that no person "shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself" is a fundamental national privilege or immunity protected chanrobles.com-red
We shall assume, but without any intention thereby of ruling upon the issue, [Footnote 6] that permission by law to the court, counsel and jury to comment upon and consider the failure of defendant "to explain or to deny by his testimony any evidence or facts in the case against him" would infringe defendant's privilege against self-incrimination under the Fifth Amendment if this were a trial in a court of the United States under a similar law. Such an assumption does not determine appellant's rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. It is settled law that the clause chanrobles.com-red
The reasoning that leads to those conclusions starts with the unquestioned premise that the Bill of Rights, when adopted, was for the protection of the individual against the federal government, and its provisions were inapplicable to similar actions done by the states. 32 U. S. 490. With the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, it was suggested that the dual citizenship recognized by its first sentence [Footnote 7] secured for citizens federal protection for their elemental privileges and immunities of state citizenship. The Slaughter-House Cases [Footnote 8] decided, contrary to the suggestion, that these chanrobles.com-red
rights, as privileges and immunities of state citizenship, remained under the sole protection of the state governments. This Court, without the expression of a contrary view upon that phase of the issues before the Court, has approved this determination. Maxwell v. Bugbee, 250 U. S. 525, 250 U. S. 537; Hamilton v. Regents, 293 U. S. 245, 293 U. S. 261. The power to free defendants in state trials from self-incrimination was specifically determined to be beyond the scope of the privileges and immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment in Twining v. New Jersey, 211 U. S. 78, 211 U. S. 91-98. "The privilege against self-incrimination may be withdrawn, and the accused put upon the stand as a witness for the state." [Footnote 9] The Twining case likewise disposed of the contention that freedom from testimonial compulsion, being specifically granted by the Bill of Rights, is a federal privilege or immunity that is protected by the Fourteenth Amendment against state invasion. This Court held that the inclusion in the Bill of Rights of this protection against the power of the national government did not make the privilege a federal privilege or immunity secured to citizens by the Constitution against state action. Twining v. New Jersey, supra, at 211 U. S. 98-99; Palko v. Connecticut, supra, at 302 U. S. 328. After declaring that state and national citizenship coexist in the same person, the Fourteenth Amendment forbids a state from abridging the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States. As a matter of words, this leaves a state free to abridge, within the limits of the due process clause, the privileges and immunities flowing from state citizenship. This reading of the chanrobles.com-red
Federal Constitution has heretofore found favor with the majority of this Court as a natural and logical interpretation. It accords with the constitutional doctrine of federalism by leaving to the states the responsibility of dealing with the privileges and immunities of their citizens except those inherent in national citizenship. [Footnote 10] It is the construction placed upon the amendment by justices whose own experience had given them contemporaneous knowledge of the purposes that led to the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. This construction has become embedded in our federal system as a functioning element in preserving the balance between national and state power. We reaffirm the conclusion of the Twining and [email protected] cases that protection against self-incrimination is not a privilege or immunity of national citizenship.
Appellant secondly contends that, if the privilege against self-incrimination is not a right protected by the privileges and immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment against state action, this privilege, to its full scope under the Fifth Amendment, inheres in the right to a fair trial. A right to a fair trial is a right admittedly protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. [Footnote 11] Therefore, appellant argues, the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects his privilege against self-incrimination. The due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, however, does not draw all the rights of the federal Bill of Rights under its protection. That contention was made and rejected in Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U. S. 319, 302 U. S. 323. It was rejected with citation of the cases excluding several of the rights, protected by the Bill of Rights, against infringement by the National Government. chanrobles.com-red
Specifically, the due process clause does not protect, by virtue of its mere existence, the accused's freedom from giving testimony by compulsion in state trials that is secured to him against federal interference by the Fifth Amendment. Twining v. New Jersey, 211 U. S. 78, 211 U. S. 99-114; Palko v. Connecticut, supra, p. 302 U. S. 323. For a state to require testimony from an accused is not necessarily a breach of a state's obligation to give a fair trial. Therefore, we must examine the effect of the California law applied in this trial to see whether the comment on failure to testify violates the protection against state action that the due process clause does grant to an accused. The due process clause forbids compulsion to testify by fear of hurt, torture or exhaustion. [Footnote 12] It forbids any other type of coercion that falls within the scope of due process. [Footnote 13] California follows Anglo-American legal tradition in excusing defendants in criminal prosecutions from compulsory testimony. Cf. VIII Wigmore on Evidence (3d ed.) § 2252. That is a matter of legal policy, and chanrobles.com-red
Generally, comment on the failure of an accused to testify is forbidden in American jurisdictions. [Footnote 15] This arises from state constitutional or statutory provisions similar in character to the federal provisions. Fifth Amendment and 28 U.S.C. § 632. California, however, is one of a few states that permit limited comment upon a defendant's failure to testify. [Footnote 16] That permission is narrow. The California law is set out in note 3 and authorizes comment by court and counsel upon the "failure of the defendant to explain or to deny by his testimony any evidence chanrobles.com-red
Appellant sets out the circumstances of this case, however, to show coercion and unfairness in permitting comment. The guilty person was not seen at the place and time of the crime. There was evidence, however, that entrance to the place or room where the crime was committed might have been obtained through a small door. It was freshly broken. Evidence showed that six fingerprints chanrobles.com-red
It is true that, if comment were forbidden, an accused in this situation could remain silent and avoid evidence of former crimes and comment upon his failure to testify. We are of the view, however, that a state may control such a situation in accordance with its own ideas of the most efficient administration of criminal justice. The purpose of due process is not to protect an accused against a proper conviction, but against an unfair conviction. When evidence is before a jury that threatens conviction, it does not seem unfair to require him to choose between leaving the adverse evidence unexplained and subjecting himself to impeachment through disclosure of former crimes. Indeed, this is a dilemma with which any defendant may be faced. If facts adverse to the defendant are proven by the prosecution, there may be no way to explain them favorably to the accused except by a witness who may be vulnerable to impeachment on cross-examination. The defendant must then decide whether or not to use such a witness. The fact that the witness may also be the defendant chanrobles.com-red
Finally, appellant contends that due process of law was denied him by the introduction as evidence of tops of women's stockings that were found in his room. The claim is made that such evidence inflamed the jury. The lower part of a woman's stocking was found under the victim's body. The top was not found. The corpse was barelegged. The tops from defendant's room did not chanrobles.com-red
Decisions of this Court do not have equal intrinsic authority. The Twining case shows the judicial process at its best -- comprehensive briefs and powerful arguments on both sides, followed by long deliberation, resulting in an opinion by Mr. Justice Moody which at once gained and has ever since retained recognition as one of the outstanding opinions in the history of the Court. After chanrobles.com-red
This does not create an issue different from that settled in the Twining case. Only a technical rule of law would exclude from consideration that which is relevant, as a matter of fair reasoning, to the solution of a problem. Sensible and just-minded men, in important affairs of life, deem it significant that a man remains silent when confronted with serious and responsible evidence against himself which it is within his power to contradict. The notion that to allow jurors to do that which sensible and right-minded men do every day violates the "immutable principles of justice" as conceived by a civilized society is to trivialize the importance of "due process." Nor does it chanrobles.com-red
For historical reasons, a limited immunity from the common duty to testify was written into the Federal Bill of Rights, and I am prepared to agree that, as part of that immunity, comment on the failure of an accused to take the witness stand is forbidden in federal prosecutions. It is so, of course, by explicit act of Congress. 20 Stat. 30; see Bruno v. United States, 308 U. S. 287. But to suggest that such a limitation can be drawn out of "due process" in its protection of ultimate decency in a civilized society is to suggest that the Due Process Clause fastened fetters of unreason upon the States. (This opinion is concerned solely with a discussion of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. I put to one side the Privileges or Immunities Clause of that Amendment. For the mischievous uses to which that clause would lend itself if its scope were not confined to that given it by all but chanrobles.com-red
Between the incorporation of the Fourteenth Amendment into the Constitution and the beginning of the present membership of the Court -- a period of seventy years -- the scope of that Amendment was passed upon by forty-three judges. Of all these judges, only one, who may respectfully be called an eccentric exception, ever indicated the belief that the Fourteenth Amendment was a shorthand summary of the first eight Amendments theretofore limiting only the Federal Government, and that due process incorporated those eight Amendments as restrictions upon the powers of the States. Among these judges were not only those who would have to be included among the greatest in the history of the Court, but -- it is especially relevant to note -- they included those whose services in the cause of human rights and the spirit of freedom are the most conspicuous in our history. It is not invidious to single out Miller, Davis, Bradley, Waite, Matthews, Gray, Fuller, Holmes, Brandeis, Stone and Cardozo (to speak only of the dead) as judges who were alert in safeguarding and promoting the interests of liberty and human dignity through law. But they were also judges mindful of the relation of our federal system to a progressively democratic society, and therefore duly regardful of the scope of authority that was left to the States even after the Civil War. And so they did not find that the Fourteenth Amendment, concerned as it was with matters fundamental to the pursuit of justice, fastened upon the States procedural arrangements which, in the language of Mr. Justice Cardozo, only those who are "narrow or provincial" would deem essential to "a fair and enlightened system of justice." Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U. S. 319, 302 U. S. 325. To suggest that it is inconsistent with a truly free chanrobles.com-red
The short answer to the suggestion that the provision of the Fourteenth Amendment, which ordains "nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law," was a way of saying that every State must thereafter initiate prosecutions through indictment by a grand jury, must have a trial by a jury of twelve in criminal cases, and must have trial by such a jury in common law suits where the amount in controversy exceeds twenty dollars, is that it is a strange way of saying it. It would be extraordinarily strange for a Constitution to convey such specific commands in such a roundabout and inexplicit way. After all, an amendment to the Constitution should be read in a "sense most obvious to the common understanding at the time of its adoption.' . . . For it was for public adoption that it was proposed." See Mr. Justice Holmes in Eisner v. Macomber, 252 U. S. 189, 252 U. S. 220. Those reading the English language with the meaning which it ordinarily conveys, those conversant with the political and legal history of the concept of due process, those sensitive to the relations of the States to the central government, as well as the relation of some of the provisions of the Bill of Rights to the process of justice, would hardly recognize the Fourteenth Amendment as a cover for the various explicit provisions of the first eight Amendments. Some of these are enduring reflections of experience with human nature, while some express the restricted views of Eighteenth-Century England regarding the best methods for the ascertainment of facts. The notion that the Fourteenth Amendment was a covert way of imposing upon the chanrobles.com-red
Indeed, the suggestion that the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates the first eight Amendments as such is not unambiguously urged. Even the boldest innovator would shrink from suggesting to more than half the States that chanrobles.com-red
they may no longer initiate prosecutions without indictment by grand jury, or that, thereafter, all the States of the Union must furnish a jury of twelve for every case involving a claim above twenty dollars. There is suggested merely a selective incorporation of the first eight Amendments into the Fourteenth Amendment. Some are in and some are out, but we are left in the dark as to which are in and which are out. Nor are we given the calculus for determining which go in and which stay out. If the basis of selection is merely that those provisions of the first eight Amendments are incorporated which commend themselves to individual justices as indispensable to the dignity and happiness of a free man, we are thrown back to a merely subjective test. The protection against unreasonable search and seizure might have primacy for one judge, while trial by a jury of twelve for every claim above twenty dollars might appear to another as an ultimate need in a free society. In the history of thought, "natural law" has a much longer and much better founded meaning and justification than such subjective selection of the first eight Amendments for incorporation into the Fourteenth. If all that is meant is that due process contains within itself certain minimal standards which are "of the very essence of a scheme of ordered liberty," Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U. S. 319, 302 U. S. 325, putting upon this Court the duty of applying these standards from time to time, then we have merely arrived at the insight which our predecessors long ago expressed. We are called upon to apply to the difficult issues of our own day the wisdom afforded by the great opinions in this field, such as those in Davidson v. New Orleans, 96 U. S. 97; Missouri v. Lewis, 101 U. S. 22; Hurtado v. California, 110 U. S. 516; Holden v. Hardy, 169 U. S. 366; Twining v. New Jersey, 211 U. S. 78, and Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U. S. 319. This guidance bids us to be duly mindful of the heritage of the past, with its great lessons of how liberties are won and chanrobles.com-red
It may not be amiss to restate the pervasive function of the Fourteenth Amendment in exacting from the States observance of basic liberties. See Malinski v. New York, 324 U. S. 401, 324 U. S. 412 et seq.; Louisiana v. Resweber, 329 U. S. 459, 329 U. S. 466 et seq. The Amendment neither comprehends the specific provisions by which the founders deemed it appropriate to restrict the federal government nor is it confined to them. The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment has an independent potency, precisely as does the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment in relation to the Federal Government. It ought not to require argument to reject the notion that due process of law meant one thing in the Fifth Amendment and another in the Fourteenth. The Fifth Amendment specifically prohibits prosecution of an "infamous crime" except upon indictment; it forbids double jeopardy; it bars compelling a person to be a witness against himself in any criminal case; it precludes deprivation of "life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. . . ." Are Madison and his contemporaries in the framing of the Bill of Rights to be charged with writing into it a meaningless clause? To consider "due process of law" as merely a shorthand statement of other specific clauses in the same amendment is to attribute to the authors and proponents of this Amendment ignorance of, or indifference to, a historic conception which was one of the great instruments in the arsenal of constitutional freedom which the Bill of Rights was to protect and strengthen. chanrobles.com-red
And so, when, as in a case like the present, a conviction in a State court is here for review under a claim that a right protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment has been denied, the issue is not whether an infraction of one of the specific provisions of the first eight Amendments is disclosed by the record. The relevant question is whether the criminal proceedings which resulted in conviction deprived the accused of the due process of law to which the United States Constitution entitled him. Judicial review of that guaranty of the Fourteenth Amendment inescapably imposes upon this Court an exercise of judgment upon the whole course of the proceedings in order to ascertain whether they offend those canons of decency and fairness which express the notions of justice of English-speaking peoples even toward chanrobles.com-red
The appellant was tried for murder in a California state court. He did not take the stand as a witness in his own behalf. The prosecuting attorney, under purported authority of a California statute, Cal.Penal Code, § 1323 (Hillyer-Lake, 1945), argued to the jury that an inference of guilt could be drawn because of appellant's failure to deny evidence offered against him. The appellant's contention in the state court and here has been that the statute denies him a right guaranteed by the Federal Constitution. The argument is that (1) permitting comment upon his failure to testify has the effect of compelling him to testify, so as to violate that provision of the Bill of Rights contained in the Fifth Amendment that "No person . . . shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself", and (2) although this provision of the Fifth Amendment originally applied only as a restraint upon federal courts, Barron v. Baltimore, 7 Pet. 243, the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to, and did, make the prohibition against compelled testimony applicable to trials in state courts. chanrobles.com-red
The Twining case was the first, as it is the only, decision of this Court which has squarely held that states were free, notwithstanding the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, to extort evidence from one accused of crime. [Footnote 2/2] I chanrobles.com-red
The first ten amendments were proposed and adopted largely because of fear that Government might unduly interfere with prized individual liberties. The people wanted and demanded a Bill of Rights written into their Constitution. The amendments embodying the Bill of Rights were intended to curb all branches of the Federal Government in the fields touched by the amendments -- Legislative, Executive, and Judicial. The Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments were pointedly aimed at confining exercise of power by courts and judges within precise boundaries, particularly in the procedure used for the trial of criminal cases. [Footnote 2/3] Past history provided strong reasons chanrobles.com-red
My study of the historical events that culminated in the Fourteenth Amendment, and the expressions of those who sponsored and favored, as well as those who opposed, its submission and passage persuades me that one of the chief objects that the provisions of the Amendment's first section, separately and as a whole, were intended to accomplish was to make the Bill of Rights, applicable to the chanrobles.com-red
See also Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U. S. 1, 330 U. S. 8, 28, 33; Thornhill v. Alabama, 310 U. S. 88, 310 U. S. 95, 310 U. S. 102; Knowlton v. Moore, 178 U. S. 41, 178 U. S. 89, 106; Reynolds v. United States, 98 U. S. 145, 98 U. S. 162; Barron v. Baltimore, supra, at 32 U. S. 250-251; @ 19 U. S. 416-420.
Investigation of the cases relied upon in Twining v. New Jersey to support the conclusion there reached that neither the Fifth Amendment's prohibition of compelled testimony, nor any of the Bill of Rights, applies to the States reveals an unexplained departure from this salutary chanrobles.com-red
In the Twining case itself, the Court was cited to a then recent book, Guthrie, Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution (1898). A few pages of that work recited some of the legislative background of the Amendment, emphasizing the speech of Senator Howard. But Guthrie did not emphasize the speeches of Congressman Bingham, nor the part he played in the framing and adoption of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment. Yet Congressman chanrobles.com-red
For this reason, I am attaching to this dissent an 332 U. S. by no means complete, of the Amendment's history. In my judgment, that history conclusively demonstrates that the language of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment, taken as a whole, was thought by those responsible for its submission to the people, and by those who opposed its submission, sufficiently explicit to guarantee that, thereafter, no state chanrobles.com-red
In 1872, four years after the Amendment was adopted, the Slaughter-House cases came to this Court. 83 U. S. 16 Wall 36. The Court was not presented in that case with the evidence which showed that the special sponsors of the Amendment in the House and Senate had expressly explained one of its principal purposes to be to change the Constitution as construed in Barron v. Baltimore, supra, and make the Bill of Rights applicable to the states. [Footnote 2/6] Nor chanrobles.com-red
was there reason to do so. For the state law under consideration in the Slaughter-House cases was only challenged as one which authorized a monopoly, and the brief for the challenger properly conceded that there was "no direct constitutional provision against a monopoly." [Footnote 2/7] chanrobles.com-red
The argument did not invoke any specific provision of the Bill of Rights, but urged that the state monopoly statute violated "the natural right of a person" to do business and engage in his trade or vocation. On this basis, it was contended that "bulwarks that have been erected around the investments of capital are impregnable against State legislation." These natural law arguments, so suggestive of the premises on which the present due process formula rests, were flatly rejected by a majority of the Court in the Slaughter-House cases. What the Court did hold was that the privileges and immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment only protected from state invasion such rights as a person has because he is a citizen of the United States. The Court enumerated some, but refused to enumerate all, of these national rights. The majority of the Court emphatically declined the invitation of counsel to hold that the Fourteenth Amendment subjected all state regulatory legislation to continuous censorship by this Court in order for it to determine whether it collided with this Court's opinion of "natural" right and justice. In effect, the Slaughter-House cases rejected the very chanrobles.com-red
After the Slaughter-House decision, the Court also said that states could, despite the "due process" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, take private property without just compensation, 96 U. S. 105; 80 U. S. 176-177; abridge the freedom of assembly guaranteed by the First Amendment, United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U. S. 542; see also Prudential Ins. Co. v. Cheek, 259 U. S. 530, 259 U. S. 543; Patterson v. Colorado, 205 U. S. 454; cf. Gitlow v. New York, 268 U. S. 652, 268 U. S. 666 (freedom of speech); prosecute for crime by information, rather than indictment, Hurtado v. People of California, 110 U. S. 516; regulate the price for storage of grain in warehouses and elevators, Munn v. Illinois, 94 U. S. 113. But this Court also held in a number of cases that colored people must, because of the Fourteenth Amendment, be accorded equal protection of the laws. See, e.g., Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U. S. 303; cf. Virginia v. Rives, 100 U. S. 313; see also Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U. S. 356.
Thus, up to and for some years after 1873, when Munn v. Illinois, supra, was decided, this Court steadfastly declined to invalidate states' legislative regulation of property rights or business practices under the Fourteenth Amendment unless there were racial discrimination involved in the state law challenged. The first significant breach in this policy came in 1889, in Chicago, M. & St. P. R. Co. v. Minnesota, 134 U. S. 418. [Footnote 2/8] A state's railroad rate regulatory statute was there stricken as violative of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This was accomplished by reference to a due process formula which did not necessarily operate so as to protect the Bill of Rights' personal liberty safeguards, but which gave a new and hitherto undiscovered scope for the Court's use of the due process clause to protect property rights under natural law concepts. And in 1896, in Chicago, B. & Q. R. Co. v. Chicago, 166 U. S. 226, chanrobles.com-red
Following the pattern of the new doctrine formalized in the foregoing decisions, the Court, in 1896, applied the due process clause to strike down a state statute which had forbidden certain types of contracts. Allgeyer v. Louisiana, 165 U. S. 578. Cf. Hoopeston Canning Co. v. Cullen, 318 U. S. 313, 318 U. S. 316, 318 U. S. 318-319. In doing so, it substantially adopted the rejected argument of counsel in the Slaughter-House cases that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees the liberty of all persons under "natural law" to engage in their chosen business or vocation. In the Allgeyer opinion, id. at 165 U. S. 589, the Court quoted with approval the concurring opinion of Mr. Justice Bradley in a second Slaughter-House case, Butchers' Union Co. v. Crescent City Co., 111 U. S. 746, 111 U. S. 762, 111 U. S. 764, 111 U. S. 765, which closely followed chanrobles.com-red
The foregoing constitutional doctrine, judicially created and adopted by expanding the previously accepted meaning of "due process," marked a complete departure from the Slaughter-House philosophy of judicial tolerance of state regulation of business activities. Conversely, the new formula contracted the effectiveness of the Fourteenth Amendment as a protection from state infringement of individual liberties enumerated in the Bill of Rights. Thus, the Court's second-thought interpretation of the Amendment was an about-face from the Slaughter-House interpretation and represented a failure to carry out the avowed purpose of the Amendment's sponsors. [Footnote 2/10] This reversal is dramatized by the fact that the Hurtado case, which had rejected the due process clause as an instrument chanrobles.com-red
At the same time that the Twining decision held that the states need not conform to the specific provisions of the Bill of Rights, it consolidated the power that the Court had assumed under the due process clause by laying even broader foundations for the Court to invalidate state and even federal regulatory legislation. For, under the Twining formula, which includes nonregard for the first eight amendments, what are "fundamental rights" and in accord with "canons of decency," as the Court chanrobles.com-red
said in Twining, and today reaffirms, is to be independently "ascertained from time to time by judicial action. . . ." Id. at 211 U. S. 101; "what is due process of law depends on circumstances." Moyer v. Peabody, 212 U. S. 78, 212 U. S. 84. Thus, the power of legislatures became what this Court would declare it to be at a particular time independently of the specific guarantees of the Bill of Rights such as the right to freedom of speech, religion and assembly, the right to just compensation for property taken for a public purpose, the right to jury trial or the right to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures. Neither the contraction of the Bill of Rights safeguards [Footnote 2/11] nor the invalidation of regulatory laws [Footnote 2/12] by this Court's appraisal of "circumstances" would readily be classified as the most satisfactory contribution of this Court to the nation. In 1912, four years after the Twining case was decided, a book written by Mr. Charles Wallace Collins gave the history of this Court's interpretation and application of the Fourteenth Amendment up to that time. It is not necessary for one fully to agree with all he said in chanrobles.com-red
Later decisions of this Court have completely undermined that phase of the Twining doctrine which broadly precluded reliance on the Bill of Rights to determine what is and what is not a "fundamental" right. Later cases have also made the Hurtado case an inadequate support for this phase of the Twining formula. For, despite Hurtado and Twining, this Court has now held that the Fourteenth Amendment protects from state invasion the following "fundamental" rights safeguarded by the Bill of Rights: right to counsel in criminal cases, Powell v. Alabama, 287 U. S. 45, 287 U. S. 67, limiting the Hurtado case; see also Betts v. Brady, 316 U. S. 455, and De Meerleer v. Michigan, 329 U. S. 663; freedom of assembly, De Jonge v. Oregon, 299 U. S. 353, 299 U. S. 364; at the very least, certain types of cruel and unusual punishment and former jeopardy, State of Louisiana ex rel. Francis v. Resweber, 329 U. S. 459; the right of an accused in a criminal case to be informed chanrobles.com-red
The Court's opinion in Twining, and the dissent in that case, made it clear that the Court intended to leave the states wholly free to compel confessions so far as the Federal Constitution is concerned. Twining v. New Jersey, supra, see particularly pp. 211 U. S. 111-114, 211 U. S. 125-126. Yet, in a series of cases since Twining, this Court has held that the Fourteenth Amendment does bar all American courts, state or federal, from convicting people of crime on coerced confessions. Chambers v. Florida, 309 U. S. 227; Ashcraft v. Tennessee, 322 U. S. 143, 322 U. S. 154-155, and cases cited. Federal courts cannot do so, because of the Fifth Amendment. chanrobles.com-red
It seems rather plain to me why the Court today does not attempt to justify all of the broad Twining discussion. That opinion carries its own refutation on what may be called the factual issue the Court resolved. The opinion itself shows, without resort to the powerful argument in the dissent of Mr. Justice Harlan, that, outside of Star Chamber practices and influences, the "English-speaking" peoples have for centuries abhorred and feared the practice of compelling people to convict themselves of crime. I shall not attempt to narrate the reasons. They are well known, and those interested can read them in both the majority and dissenting opinions in the Twining case, in Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616, and in the cases cited in notes 8, 9, 10, and 11 of Ashcraft v. Tennessee, supra. Nor does the history of the practice of compelling testimony in this country, relied on in the Twining opinion, support the degraded rank which that opinion gave the Fifth Amendment's privilege against compulsory self-incrimination. I think the history there recited by the Court belies its conclusion. chanrobles.com-red
The Court in Twining evidently was forced to resort for its degradation of the privilege to the fact that Governor Winthrop, in trying Mrs. Anne Hutchinson in 1627, was evidently "not aware of any privilege against self-incrimination or conscious of any duty to respect it." Id. at 211 U. S. 103-104. Of course, not. [Footnote 2/14] Mrs. Hutchinson was tried, if trial it can be called, for holding unorthodox religious views. [Footnote 2/15] People with a consuming belief that their religious convictions must be forced on others rarely ever believe that the unorthodox have any rights which should or can be rightfully respected. As a result of her trial and compelled admissions, Mrs. Hutchinson was found guilty of unorthodoxy and banished from Massachusetts. The lamentable experience of Mrs. Hutchinson and others contributed to the overwhelming sentiment that demanded adoption chanrobles.com-red
I cannot consider the Bill of Rights to be an outworn 18th Century "strait jacket," as the Twining opinion did. Its provisions may be thought outdated abstractions by some. And it is true that they were designed to meet ancient evils. But they are the same kind of human evils that have emerged from century to century wherever excessive power is sought by the few at the expense of the many. In my judgment, the people of no nation can lose their liberty so long as a Bill of Rights like ours survives and its basic purposes are conscientiously interpreted, enforced and respected so as to afford continuous protection against old, as well as new, devices and practices which might thwart those purposes. I fear to see the consequences of the Court's practice of substituting its own concepts of decency and fundamental justice for the language of the Bill of Rights as its point of departure in interpreting and enforcing that Bill of Rights. If the choice must be between the selective process of the Palko decision, applying some of the Bill of Rights to the States, or the Twining rule, applying none of them, I would choose the Palko selective process. But, rather than accept either of these choices, I would follow what I believe was the original purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment -- to extend to all the people of the nation the complete protection of the Bill of Rights. To hold that this Court can determine what, if any, provisions of the Bill of Rights will be enforced, and, if so, to what degree, is to frustrate the great design of a written Constitution. chanrobles.com-red
Since Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, was decided, the practice has been firmly established, for better or worse, that courts can strike down legislative enactments which violate the Constitution. This process, of course, involves interpretation, and since words can have many meanings, interpretation obviously may result in contraction or extension of the original purpose of a constitutional chanrobles.com-red
It is noteworthy that, before the Twining decision, Justices Bradley, Field, Swayne, Harlan, and apparently Brewer, although they had not been presented with and did not rely upon a documented history of the Fourteenth Amendment such as is set out in the 332 U. S. 120-123), I have referred to some cases evidencing their views, and set out some expressions of it.
See particularly dissents in cases cited 332 U. S. 12, supra.
An early and prescient expose of the inconsistency of the natural law formula with our constitutional form of government appears in the concurring opinion of Mr. Justice Iredell in @ 3 U. S. 398, 3 U. S. 399:
The legislative origin of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment seems to have been in the Joint Committee on Reconstruction. That Committee had been appointed by a concurrent resolution of the House and Senate with authority to report "by bill or otherwise" whether the former Confederate States "are entitled to be represented in either House of Congress." Cong.Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. (1865) 6, 30. The broad mission of that Committee was revealed by its very first action of sending a delegation to President Johnson requesting him to "defer all further executive action in regard to reconstruction until this committee shall have taken action on that subject." Journal of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. (1866), reprinted as Sen.Doc. No. 711, 63d Cong., 3d Sess. (1915) 6. It immediately set about the business of drafting constitutional amendments which would outline the plan of reconstruction which it would recommend to Congress. Some of those proposed amendments related to suffrage and representation in the South. Journal, 7. On January 12, 1866, a subcommittee, consisting of Senators Fessenden (Chairman of the Reconstruction Committee) chanrobles.com-red
When Mr. Hotchkiss suggested that the amendment should be couched in terms of a prohibition against the States in addition to authorizing Congress to legislate chanrobles.com-red
Mr. Bingham himself vigorously opposed and voted against the Bill. His objection was two-fold: first, insofar as it extended the protections of the Bill of Rights as against state invasion, he believed the measure to be unconstitutional because of the Supreme Court's holding in Barron v. Baltimore, supra. While favoring the extension of the Bill of Rights guarantees as against state invasion, he thought this could be done only by passage of his amendment. His second objection to the Bill was that, in his view, it would go beyond his objective of making the states observe the Bill of Rights, and would actually strip the states of power to govern, centralizing all power in the Federal Government. To this, he was opposed. His views are, in part, reflected by his own remarks and the answers to him by Mr. Wilson. Mr. Bingham said, in part: chanrobles.com-red
Journal, 30. After the committee had twice declined to recommend Mr. Bingham's proposal, on April 28, it was accepted by the Committee, substantially in the form he had proposed it, as § 1 of the recommended Amendment. Journal, 44. chanrobles.com-red
Both proponents and opponents of § 1 of the amendment spoke of its relation to the Civil Rights Bill which had been previously passed over the President's veto. Some considered that the amendment settled any doubts there might be as to the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Bill. Cong.Globe, 2511, 2896. Others maintained that the Civil Rights Bill would be unconstitutional chanrobles.com-red
Also just prior to the final votes in both Houses passing the resolution of adoption, the Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, H.R.Rep. No. 30, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. (1866); Sen.Rep. No. 112, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. (1866), was submitted. Cong.Globe, supra, 3038, 3051. This report was apparently not distributed in time to influence the debates in Congress. But a student of the period reports that 150,000 copies of the Report and the testimony which it contained were printed in order that senators and representatives might distribute them among their constituents. Apparently the Report was widely reprinted in the press and used as a campaign document chanrobles.com-red
Flack, supra, at 142, who canvassed newspaper coverage and speeches concerning the popular discussion of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, indicates that chanrobles.com-red
Hereafter appear statements in opinions of this Court rendered after adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment and prior to the Twining case which indicate a belief that the Fourteenth Amendment, and particularly its privileges and immunities clause, was a plain application of the Bill of Rights to the states. See p. 332 U. S. 75, 332 U. S. supra.
In the 83 U. S. 83, the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Field emphasized that the Fourteenth Amendment made a "citizen of a State . . . a citizen of the United States residing in that State." Id. at 83 U. S. 95. But he enunciated a relatively limited number of privileges and immunities which he considered protected by national power from state interference by the Fourteenth Amendment. Apparently dissatisfied with the limited interpretation of Mr. Justice Field, Mr. Justice Bradley, although agreeing with all that Mr. Justice Field had said, wrote an additional dissent. [email protected] at 83 U. S. 111. In it, he said:
While in substantial agreement with the views of MR. JUSTICE BLACK, I have one reservation and one addition to make. chanrobles.com-red
2. If he does take the stand, thereby opening himself to cross-examination, so as to overcome the effects of the provision in question, he is necessarily compelled to testify against himself. In that case, his testimony on cross-examination is the result of the coercive pressure of the provision, rather than his own volition. chanrobles.com-red