Opinion ID: 105149
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: was it unconstitutional if these confessions were used as the basis of conviction?

Text: Since these convictions may rest in whole or in part upon the confessions, we must consider whether they are a constitutionally permissible foundation for a finding of guilt. Inquiries on which this Court must be satisfied are: (1) Under what circumstances were the confessions obtained? (2) Has the use of the confessions been repugnant to that fundamental fairness essential to the very concept of justice? Lisenba v. California, 314 U. S. 219, 236. The first is identical with that litigated before the trial court and jury. The second is within, if not identical with, those questions considered by the state appellate court. As to both questions, we have the identical evidence that was before both state courts. At the threshold of our inquiry, therefore, lies the question: What, if any, weight do we give to the verdict of the jury, the rulings of the trial judge and the determination of the state appellate court? Petitioners' argument here essentially is that the conclusions of the New York judges and jurors are mistaken and that by reweighing the same evidence we, as a superjury, should find that the confessions were coerced. This misapprehends our function and scope of review, a misconception which may be shared by some state courts with the result that they feel a diminished sense of responsibility for protecting defendants in confession cases. [24] Of course, this Court cannot allow itself to be completely bound by state court determination of any issue essential to decision of a claim of federal right, else federal law could be frustrated by distorted fact finding. But that does not mean that we give no weight to the decision below, or approach the record de novo or with the latitude of choice open to some state appellate courts, such as the New York Court of Appeals. Mr. Justice Brandeis, for this Court, long ago warned that the Fourteenth Amendment does not, in guaranteeing due process, assure immunity from judicial error. Milwaukee Electric Railway & Light Co. v. Milwaukee, 252 U. S. 100, 106. It is only miscarriages of such gravity and magnitude that they cannot be expected to happen in an enlightened system of justice, or be tolerated by it if they do, that cause us to intervene to review, in the name of the Federal Constitution, the weight of conflicting evidence to support a decision by a state court. It is common courtroom knowledge that extortion of confessions by third-degree methods is charged falsely as well as denied falsely. The practical problem is to separate the true from the false. Primary, and in most cases final, responsibility for determining contested facts rests, and must rest, upon state trial and appellate courts. A jury and the trial judgeknowing local conditions, close to the scene of events, hearing and observing the witnesses and partieshave the same undeniable advantages over any appellate tribunal in determining the charge of coercion of a confession as in determining the main charge of guilt of the crime. When the issue has been fairly tried and reviewed, and there is no indication that constitutional standards of judgment have been disregarded, we will accord to the state's own decision great and, in the absence of impeachment by conceded facts, decisive respect. Gallegos v. Nebraska, 342 U. S. 55, 60; Lyons v. Oklahoma, 322 U. S. 596, 602-603; Lisenba v. California, 314 U. S. 219. Accordingly, we accept this verdict and judgment as a permissible resolution of contradictions in evidence or conflicting inferences unless, as is urged, undisputed facts indicate use of incorrect constitutional standards of judgment. This may best be determined by separate examination of the following conclusions, implicit in the judgments below: (1) that these confessions were not extorted by physical coercion; (2) that these confessions were not extorted by methods which, though short of physical coercion, were so oppressive as to render the confessions inadmissible; and (3) that admitted illegal detention of petitioners at the time of the confessions did not render them inadmissible. 1. Physical violence. Physical violence or threat of it by the custodian of a prisoner during detention serves no lawful purpose, invalidates confessions that otherwise would be convincing, and is universally condemned by the law. When present, there is no need to weigh or measure its effects on the will of the individual victim. The tendency of the innocent, as well as the guilty, to risk remote results of a false confession rather than suffer immediate pain is so strong that judges long ago found it necessary to guard against miscarriages of justice by treating any confession made concurrently with torture or threat of brutality as too untrustworthy to be received as evidence of guilt. Admitted injuries and bruises on defendants' bodies after arraignment were mute but unanswerable witnesses that their persons recently had been subjected to violence from some source. Slight evidence, even interested testimony, that it occurred during the period of detention or at the hands of the police, or failure by the prosecution to meet the charge with all reasonably available evidence, might well have tipped the scales of decision below. [25] Even here, it would have force if there were any evidence whatever to connect the admitted injuries with the events or period of interrogation. But there is no such word in the record. On the contrary, we have positive testimony of the police, not materially inconsistent or inherently improbable, unshaken on cross-examination. The only expert testimony on the subject is undisputed and is that the injuries may have been sustained before arrest. This becomes more than a possibility when we consider that neither defendants nor anyone else tells us what defendants were up to in the period just prior to arrest. We are not convinced from their criminal records and way of life as now known to us, though not to the jury, that their free days or nights were secure from violence. This, with the whole evidence concerning the confessions, leaves us no basis for throwing out the decisions of the courts below, unless we simply prefer the unsworn claims of defendants' counsel against the evidence. As to the inferences to be drawn from unexplained injuries, under these circumstances, we should defer to the advantages of trial judge and jury. For seven weeks they observed the day-to-day demeanor of defendants, their attitudes and reactions; all the knowledge we have of their personalities is still photographs of two of them. The trial judge and jury also for long periods could observe the police officers whose conduct was in question, knew not only what they answered but how they answered, could form some opinions of their attitudesof the personal characteristics which never can get into a printed record but which make for belief or unbelief that they were guilty of cruelty and violence. We determine that the state court could properly find that the confessions were not obtained by physical force or threats. 2. Psychological coercion. Psychological coercion is claimed as a secondary contention. It is urged that admitted facts show psychological pressure by interrogation, such as to overpower these petitioners' mental resistance and induce involuntary confessions. Of course, a process of interrogation can be so prolonged and unremitting, especially when accompanied by deprivation of refreshment, rest or relief, as to accomplish extortion of an involuntary confession. But the inquiry as to such allegations has a different point of departure. Interrogation is not inherently coercive, as is physical violence. Interrogation does have social value in solving crime, as physical force does not. By their own answers many suspects clear themselves, and the information they give frequently points out another who is guilty. Indeed, interrogation of those who know something about the facts is the chief means to solution of crime. The duty to disclose knowledge of crime rests upon all citizens. It is so vital that one known to be innocent may be detained, in the absence of bail, as a material witness. [26] This Court never has held that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits a state from such detention and interrogation of a suspect as under the circumstances appears reasonable and not coercive. Of course, such inquiries have limits. But the limits are not defined merely by calling an interrogation an inquisition, which adds to the problem only the emotions inherited from medieval experience. The limits in any case depend upon a weighing of the circumstances of pressure against the power of resistance of the person confessing. What would be overpowering to the weak of will or mind might be utterly ineffective against an experienced criminal. Both Stein and Cooper confessed only after about twelve hours of intermittent questioning. In each case this was stretched out over a 32-hour period, with the suspect sleeping and eating in the interim. In the case of Cooper, a substantial part of this time he spent driving a bargain with the police and the parole officers. It also is true that the questioning was by a number of officers at a time and by different officers at different times. But we cannot say that the use of successive officers to question these petitioners for the periods of time indicated is so oppressive as to overwhelm powers of resistance. While we have reversed convictions founded on confessions secured through interrogations by relays, [27] we have also sustained conviction when, under different circumstances, the relay technique was employed. [28] But we have never gone so far as to hold that the Fourteenth Amendment requires a one-to-one ratio between interrogators and prisoners, or that extensive questioning of a prisoner automatically makes the evidence he gives in response constitutionally prohibited. The inward consciousness of having committed a murder and a robbery and of being confronted with evidence of guilt which they could neither deny nor explain seems enough to account for the confessions here. These men were not young, soft, ignorant or timid. They were not inexperienced in the ways of crime or its detection, nor were they dumb as to their rights. At the very end of his interrogation, the spectacle of Cooper naming his own terms for confession, deciding for himself with whom he would negotiate, getting what he wanted as a consideration for telling what he knew, reduces to absurdity his present claim that he was coerced into confession. Of course, these confessions were not voluntary in the sense that petitioners wanted to make them or that they were completely spontaneous, like a confession to a priest, a lawyer, or a psychiatrist. But in this sense no criminal confession is voluntary. Cooper's and Stein's confessions obviously came when they were convinced that their dance was over and the time had come to pay the fiddler. Even then, Cooper was so far in control of himself and the situation as to dictate the quid pro quo for which he would confess. That confession came at a time when he must have known that the police already knew enough, from Jeppeson and Brassett, to make his implication inevitable. Stein held out until after Cooper had confessed and implicated him. [29] Both confessions were voluntary, in the only sense in which confessions to the police by one under arrest and suspicion ever are. The state courts could properly find an absence of psychological coercion. 3. Illegal detention. Illegal detention alone is said to void these confessions. All three of the prisoners were held incommunicado at the barracks until the evening of June 8, when they were taken before a nearby magistrate and arraigned. This delay in arraignment was held by the trial judge to be unreasonable as a matter of law and a violation of the statutes of the State of New York. [30] However, such delay does not make a confession secured during such period of illegal detention necessarily inadmissible as a matter of New York law. [31] To delay arraignment, meanwhile holding the suspect incommunicado, facilitates and usually accompanies use of third-degree methods. Therefore, we regard such occurrences as relevant circumstantial evidence in the inquiry as to physical or psychological coercion. As such, it was received and the jury was instructed to consider it in this case. But the petitioners' contention here goes fartherit is that the delayed arraignment compelled the rejection of the confessions. Petitioners confuse the more rigid rule of exclusion which, in the exercise of our supervisory power, [32] we have promulgated for federal courts with the more limited requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment. [33] This, we have held, did not impose rules of evidence on state courts which bind them to exclude a confession because, without coercion, it was obtained while a prisoner was uncounseled and illegally detained. Stroble v. California, 343 U. S. 181, 197; Lisenba v. California, 314 U. S. 219. From the foregoing considerations, we conclude that if the jury resolved that the confessions were admissible as a basis for conviction it was not constitutional error. V. IF THE JURY REJECTED THE CONFESSIONS, COULD IT CONSTITUTIONALLY BASE A CONVICTION ON OTHER SUFFICIENT EVIDENCE? Petitioners raised this question by a request for instruction to the jury that if it found the confessions to have been coerced it must return a verdict of acquittal. This was refused. Their principal authority for the requested charge is Malinski v. New York, 324 U. S. 401, which was tried by the same procedure followed here. This Court reversed the conviction and the opinion of four Justices said of the confession found therein to have been coerced (p. 404): And if it is introduced at the trial, the judgment of conviction will be set aside even though the evidence apart from the confession might have been sufficient to sustain the jury's verdict. Similar expressions are to be found in other cases. It is hard to see why a jury should be allowed to return a verdict which cannot be allowed to stand. If having heard an illegally obtained confession prevents a legal verdict of guilty on other sufficient evidence, why permit return of one foredoomed to be illegal? The alternative, of course, is an acquittal, which is what petitioners asked. The claim is far-reaching. There can be no jury trial of the coercion issue without bringing to the knowledge of the jurors the fact of confession and usually its contents. But American practice has evolved no technique for learning, through special verdict or otherwise, what part the knowledge plays in the result. Hence the dilemma of this case is always present, if not presented in earlier cases. If this uncertainty invalidates any conviction or requires an acquittal, it is a grave matter, for most states, like New York, permit no prosecution after acquittal. [34] This would go far toward making it impracticable to submit the issue of coercion to the jury, a traditional practice assumed on the whole to be of advantage to the defense and an additional protection to the accused. The claim also is novel. This Court never has decided that reception of a confession into evidence, even if we held it to be coerced, requires an acquittal or discharge of a defendant. On the contrary, this Court has returned all such cases for retrial, which we should not have done if obtaining and attempted use of a coerced confession were enough to require acquittal. It is not deniable that apart from the Malinski statement there have been other similar utterances. Lyons v. Oklahoma, 322 U. S. 596, 597 (footnote); Stroble v. California, 343 U. S. 181, 190; Gallegos v. Nebraska, 342 U. S. 55, 63. It is clear, however, that these statements were dicta about a proposition not essential to the result, since in each instance those confessions were sustained and the convictions affirmed. And, of course, the present consequences were not asserted or argued at the bar nor anticipated or approved by anything appearing in the opinions. Except in Malinski, the question presented here could not have been raised or decided. This Court's power to reverse such a conviction was first exerted in Brown v. Mississippi, 297 U. S. 278, in which the only evidence in the trial consisted of a confession admittedly secured through mob violence. The Court there reasoned that if the defendant's trial consisted solely of the introduction of such evidence, he had only a mere pretense of a trial; the actual trial had occurred during the extortion of the confession, and the subsequent proceeding was only a formal ratification of the mob's action. Such a proceeding would be a violation of the Due Process Clause under even the most restricted view. In Ashcraft v. Tennessee, 322 U. S. 143, 145, and Ward v. Texas, 316 U. S. 547, we noted that without the confession there could be no conviction. And in Lyons, there was no credible evidence of guilt in the record except the confession; in the Gallegos case, it is noted that conviction without the confession would logically have been impossible (p. 60) and this Court therefore assumed that the jury found the statements voluntary. Against this factual background, we do not think our cases establish that to submit a confession to a state jury for judgment of the coercion issue automatically disqualifies it from finding a conviction on other sufficient evidence, if it rejects the confession. [35] Here the evidence of guilt, consisting of direct testimony of the surviving victim, Waterbury, and the well-corroborated accomplice, Dorfman, as well as incriminating circumstances unexplained, is enough apart from the confessions so that it could not be held constitutionally or legally insufficient to warrant the jury verdict. Indeed, if the confessions had been omitted and the convictions rested on the other evidence alone, we would find no grounds to review, not to mention to reverse them. We would have a different question if the procedure had been that which may have been in mind when some of our cases were written. Of course, where the judge makes a final determination that a confession is admissible and sends it to the jury as a part of the evidence to be considered on the issue of guilt and the ruling admitting the confession is found on review to be erroneous, the conviction, at least normally, should fall with the confession. But here the confessions are put before the jury only tentatively, subject to its judgment as to voluntariness and with binding instructions that they be rejected and ignored unless found beyond reasonable doubt to have been voluntary. By petitioners' hypothesis on this point, the jury itself rejected the confessions. The ample other evidence makes this a possible, if not very convincing, explanation of the verdict. By the very assumption, however, there has been no error, for the confessions finally were rejected as the free choice of the jury. We could hold that such provisional and contingent presentation of the confessions precludes a verdict on the other sufficient evidence after they are rejected only if we deemed the Fourteenth Amendment to enact a rigid exclusionary rule of evidence rather than a guarantee against conviction on inherently untrustworthy evidence. We have refused to hold it to enact an exclusionary rule in the case of other illegally obtained evidence. Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U. S. 25; Schwartz v. Texas, 344 U. S. 199; Snyder v. Massachusetts, 291 U. S. 97. See Adamson v. California, 332 U. S. 46; United States v. Carignan, 342 U. S. 36. Coerced confessions are not more stained with illegality than other evidence obtained in violation of law. But reliance on a coerced confession vitiates a conviction because such a confession combines the persuasiveness of apparent conclusiveness with what judicial experience shows to be illusory and deceptive evidence. A forced confession is a false foundation for any conviction, while evidence obtained by illegal search and seizure, wire tapping, or larceny may be and often is of the utmost verity. Such police lawlessness therefore may not void state convictions while forced confessions will do so. We find no error in refusing the instruction asked in this case. But this does not exhaust petitioners' arsenal of objections. They argue that even if the jury were permitted to find the verdict, a reviewing court must set it aside. They say that affirmance without opinion may mean that, while the Court of Appeals thought the treatment of the confessions erroneous, it may have affirmed on the basis that, in view of other sufficient evidence, the error was harmless. The New York statute, [36] like the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, [37] commands reviewing courts to disregard errors and irregularities which do not affect substantial rights. That such a general legislative mandate is constitutional is not in question. If the general rule is not prohibited, the question in each case becomes one as to the propriety of its application to the evidence. In a trial such as this, lasting seven weeks, where objections by three defense counsel required in excess of three hundred rulings by the trial court without the long deliberation and debate possible for appellate court consideration, it would be a miracle if there were not some questions on which an appellate court would rule otherwise than did the trial judge. The harmless-error statutes have been adopted to give discretion to overlook errors which cannot be seen to do injustice. But, whatever may have been the grounds of the Court of Appeals, we base our decision, not upon grounds that error has been harmless, but upon the ground that we find no constitutional error. We have pointed out that it was not error if the jury admitted and relied on the confession and was not error if they rejected it and convicted on other evidence. To say that although there was no error in the trial an appellate court must reverse would require justification by more authority than we are able to discover.