Opinion ID: 105149
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: wissner's case.

Text: Wissner's case is somewhat different and its disposition involves other considerations. Wissner never confessed, but he was implicated by those who did. His objections raise questions of admissibility of the confessions to which he was not a party. However, we find as regards Wissner no constitutional error such as would justify our setting aside his conviction. Our holding that it was permissible for the state courts to find that the confessions were voluntary takes away the support for Wissner's position here. But, even if the confessions were considered to have been involuntary, their use would not have violated any federal right of Wissner's. Malinski v. New York, 324 U. S. 401, 410-412. This Court there refused to reverse the conviction of Rudish, a codefendant of Malinski who had been named in the latter's confession. It is true that Rudish's name was there deleted and an X substituted in its place before the jury got the confession. Use of this device does not appear to have been controlling in the Court's decision and Mr. Justice Rutledge, dissenting, pointed out what no one questioned, that The devices were so obvious as perhaps to emphasize the identity of those they purported to conceal. P. 430. On remand, the New York Court of Appeals on its own initiative ordered a new trial for Rudish as well as Malinski. 294 N. Y. 500, 63 N. E. 2d 77. Surely in the light of the other testimony such a deletion from the confessions here would not have diverted their incriminating statements from Wissner to an anonymous nobody. Wissner, however, contends that his federal rights were infringed because he was unable to cross-examine accusing witnesses, i. e., the confessors. He contends that the privilege of confrontation is secured by the Fourteenth Amendment, relying on one sentence in Snyder v. Massachusetts, 291 U. S. 97, 107. [38] However, the words cited were quoted verbatim from Dowdell v. United States, 221 U. S. 325, 330, in which the language was used to describe the purpose of the Sixth Amendment provision on confrontation in federal cases. It was transposed to Snyder solely to point out the distinction between a right of confrontation and a mere right of an accused to be present at his own trial. [39] The Court in Snyder specifically refrained from holding that there was any right of confrontation under the Fourteenth Amendment, [40] and clearly held to the contrary in West v. Louisiana, 194 U. S. 258, in which it was decided that the Federal Constitution did not preclude Louisiana from using affidavits on a criminal trial. Basically, Wissner's objection to the introduction of these confessions is that as to him they are hearsay. The hearsay-evidence rule, with all its subtleties, anomalies and ramifications, will not be read into the Fourteenth Amendment. Cf. West v. Louisiana, supra . Perhaps the methods adopted by the New York courts to protect Wissner against any disadvantage from the State's use of the Cooper and Stein confessions were not the most effective conceivable. But its procedure does not run foul of the Fourteenth Amendment because another method may seem to our thinking to be fairer or wiser or to give a surer promise of protection to the prisoner at the bar. Snyder v. Massachusetts, supra, at 105.