Opinion ID: 107252
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: constitutional premises.

Text: It is most fitting to begin an inquiry into the constitutional precedents by surveying the limits on confessions the Court has evolved under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This is so because these cases show that there exists a workable and effective means of dealing with confessions in a judicial manner; because the cases are the baseline from which the Court now departs and so serve to measure the actual as opposed to the professed distance it travels; and because examination of them helps reveal how the Court has coasted into its present position. The earliest confession cases in this Court emerged from federal prosecutions and were settled on a nonconstitutional basis, the Court adopting the common-law rule that the absence of inducements, promises, and threats made a confession voluntary and admissible. Hopt v. Utah, 110 U. S. 574; Pierce v. United States, 160 U. S. 355. While a later case said the Fifth Amendment privilege controlled admissibility, this proposition was not itself developed in subsequent decisions. [2] The Court did, however, heighten the test of admissibility in federal trials to one of voluntariness in fact, Wan v. United States, 266 U. S. 1, 14 (quoted, ante, p. 462), and then by and large left federal judges to apply the same standards the Court began to derive in a string of state court cases. This new line of decisions, testing admissibility by the Due Process Clause, began in 1936 with Brown v. Mississippi, 297 U. S. 278, and must now embrace somewhat more than 30 full opinions of the Court. [3] While the voluntariness rubric was repeated in many instances, e. g., Lyons v. Oklahoma, 322 U. S. 596, the Court never pinned it down to a single meaning but on the contrary infused it with a number of different values. To travel quickly over the main themes, there was an initial emphasis on reliability, e. g., Ward v. Texas, 316 U. S. 547, supplemented by concern over the legality and fairness of the police practices, e. g., Ashcraft v. Tennessee, 322 U. S. 143, in an accusatorial system of law enforcement, Watts v. Indiana, 338 U. S. 49, 54, and eventually by close attention to the individual's state of mind and capacity for effective choice, e. g., Gallegos v. Colorado, 370 U. S. 49. The outcome was a continuing re-evaluation on the facts of each case of how much pressure on the suspect was permissible. [4] Among the criteria often taken into account were threats or imminent danger, e. g., Payne v. Arkansas, 356 U. S. 560, physical deprivations such as lack of sleep or food, e. g., Reck v. Pate, 367 U. S. 433, repeated or extended interrogation, e. g., Chambers v. Florida, 309 U. S. 227, limits on access to counsel or friends, Crooker v. California, 357 U. S. 433; Cicenia v. Lagay, 357 U. S. 504, length and illegality of detention under state law, e. g., Haynes v. Washington, 373 U. S. 503, and individual weakness or incapacities, Lynumn v. Illinois, 372 U. S. 528. Apart from direct physical coercion, however, no single default or fixed combination of defaults guaranteed exclusion, and synopses of the cases would serve little use because the overall gauge has been steadily changing, usually in the direction of restricting admissibility. But to mark just what point had been reached before the Court jumped the rails in Escobedo v. Illinois, 378 U. S. 478, it is worth capsulizing the then-recent case of Haynes v. Washington, 373 U. S. 503. There, Haynes had been held some 16 or more hours in violation of state law before signing the disputed confession, had received no warnings of any kind, and despite requests had been refused access to his wife or to counsel, the police indicating that access would be allowed after a confession. Emphasizing especially this last inducement and rejecting some contrary indicia of voluntariness, the Court in a 5-to-4 decision held the confession inadmissible. There are several relevant lessons to be drawn from this constitutional history. The first is that with over 25 years of precedent the Court has developed an elaborate, sophisticated, and sensitive approach to admissibility of confessions. It is judicial in its treatment of one case at a time, see Culombe v. Connecticut, 367 U. S. 568, 635 (concurring opinion of THE CHIEF JUSTICE), flexible in its ability to respond to the endless mutations of fact presented, and ever more familiar to the lower courts. Of course, strict certainty is not obtained in this developing process, but this is often so with constitutional principles, and disagreement is usually confined to that borderland of close cases where it matters least. The second point is that in practice and from time to time in principle, the Court has given ample recognition to society's interest in suspect questioning as an instrument of law enforcement. Cases countenancing quite significant pressures can be cited without difficulty, [5] and the lower courts may often have been yet more tolerant. Of course the limitations imposed today were rejected by necessary implication in case after case, the right to warnings having been explicitly rebuffed in this Court many years ago. Powers v. United States, 223 U. S. 303; Wilson v. United States, 162 U. S. 613. As recently as Haynes v. Washington, 373 U. S. 503, 515, the Court openly acknowledged that questioning of witnesses and suspects is undoubtedly an essential tool in effective law enforcement. Accord, Crooker v. California, 357 U. S. 433, 441. Finally, the cases disclose that the language in many of the opinions overstates the actual course of decision. It has been said, for example, that an admissible confession must be made by the suspect in the unfettered exercise of his own will, Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U. S. 1, 8, and that a prisoner is not `to be made the deluded instrument of his own conviction,'  Culombe v. Connecticut, 367 U. S. 568, 581 (Frankfurter, J., announcing the Court's judgment and an opinion). Though often repeated, such principles are rarely observed in full measure. Even the word voluntary may be deemed somewhat misleading, especially when one considers many of the confessions that have been brought under its umbrella. See, e. g., supra, n. 5. The tendency to overstate may be laid in part to the flagrant facts often before the Court; but in any event one must recognize how it has tempered attitudes and lent some color of authority to the approach now taken by the Court. I turn now to the Court's asserted reliance on the Fifth Amendment, an approach which I frankly regard as a trompe l'oeil. The Court's opinion in my view reveals no adequate basis for extending the Fifth Amendment's privilege against self-incrimination to the police station. Far more important, it fails to show that the Court's new rules are well supported, let alone compelled, by Fifth Amendment precedents. Instead, the new rules actually derive from quotation and analogy drawn from precedents under the Sixth Amendment, which should properly have no bearing on police interrogation. The Court's opening contention, that the Fifth Amendment governs police station confessions, is perhaps not an impermissible extension of the law but it has little to commend itself in the present circumstances. Historically, the privilege against self-incrimination did not bear at all on the use of extra-legal confessions, for which distinct standards evolved; indeed, the history of the two principles is wide apart, differing by one hundred years in origin, and derived through separate lines of precedents . . . . 8 Wigmore, Evidence § 2266, at 401 (McNaughton rev. 1961). Practice under the two doctrines has also differed in a number of important respects. [6] Even those who would readily enlarge the privilege must concede some linguistic difficulties since the Fifth Amendment in terms proscribes only compelling any person in any criminal case to be a witness against himself. Cf. Kamisar, Equal Justice in the Gatehouses and Mansions of American Criminal Procedure, in Criminal Justice in Our Time 1, 25-26 (1965). Though weighty, I do not say these points and similar ones are conclusive, for, as the Court reiterates, the privilege embodies basic principles always capable of expansion. [7] Certainly the privilege does represent a protective concern for the accused and an emphasis upon accusatorial rather than inquisitorial values in law enforcement, although this is similarly true of other limitations such as the grand jury requirement and the reasonable doubt standard. Accusatorial values, however, have openly been absorbed into the due process standard governing confessions; this indeed is why at present the kinship of the two rules [governing confessions and self-incrimination] is too apparent for denial. McCormick, Evidence 155 (1954). Since extension of the general principle has already occurred, to insist that the privilege applies as such serves only to carry over inapposite historical details and engaging rhetoric and to obscure the policy choices to be made in regulating confessions. Having decided that the Fifth Amendment privilege does apply in the police station, the Court reveals that the privilege imposes more exacting restrictions than does the Fourteenth Amendment's voluntariness test. [8] It then emerges from a discussion of Escobedo that the Fifth Amendment requires for an admissible confession that it be given by one distinctly aware of his right not to speak and shielded from the compelling atmosphere of interrogation. See ante, pp. 465-466. From these key premises, the Court finally develops the safeguards of warning, counsel, and so forth. I do not believe these premises are sustained by precedents under the Fifth Amendment. [9] The more important premise is that pressure on the suspect must be eliminated though it be only the subtle influence of the atmosphere and surroundings. The Fifth Amendment, however, has never been thought to forbid all pressure to incriminate one's self in the situations covered by it. On the contrary, it has been held that failure to incriminate one's self can result in denial of removal of one's case from state to federal court, Maryland v. Soper, 270 U. S. 9; in refusal of a military commission, Orloff v. Willoughby, 345 U. S. 83; in denial of a discharge in bankruptcy, Kaufman v. Hurwitz, 176 F. 2d 210; and in numerous other adverse consequences. See 8 Wigmore, Evidence § 2272, at 441-444, n. 18 (McNaughton rev. 1961); Maguire, Evidence of Guilt § 2.062 (1959). This is not to say that short of jail or torture any sanction is permissible in any case; policy and history alike may impose sharp limits. See, e. g., Griffin v. California, 380 U. S. 609. However, the Court's unspoken assumption that any pressure violates the privilege is not supported by the precedents and it has failed to show why the Fifth Amendment prohibits that relatively mild pressure the Due Process Clause permits. The Court appears similarly wrong in thinking that precise knowledge of one's rights is a settled prerequisite under the Fifth Amendment to the loss of its protections. A number of lower federal court cases have held that grand jury witnesses need not always be warned of their privilege, e. g., United States v. Scully, 225 F. 2d 113, 116, and Wigmore states this to be the better rule for trial witnesses. See 8 Wigmore, Evidence § 2269 (McNaughton rev. 1961). Cf. Henry v. Mississippi, 379 U. S. 443, 451-452 (waiver of constitutional rights by counsel despite defendant's ignorance held allowable). No Fifth Amendment precedent is cited for the Court's contrary view. There might of course be reasons apart from Fifth Amendment precedent for requiring warning or any other safeguard on questioning but that is a different matter entirely. See infra, pp. 516-517. A closing word must be said about the Assistance of Counsel Clause of the Sixth Amendment, which is never expressly relied on by the Court but whose judicial precedents turn out to be linchpins of the confession rules announced today. To support its requirement of a knowing and intelligent waiver, the Court cites Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U. S. 458, ante, p. 475; appointment of counsel for the indigent suspect is tied to Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U. S. 335, and Douglas v. California, 372 U. S. 353, ante, p. 473; the silent-record doctrine is borrowed from Carnley v. Cochran, 369 U. S. 506, ante, p. 475, as is the right to an express offer of counsel, ante, p. 471. All these cases imparting glosses to the Sixth Amendment concerned counsel at trial or on appeal. While the Court finds no pertinent difference between judicial proceedings and police interrogation, I believe the differences are so vast as to disqualify wholly the Sixth Amendment precedents as suitable analogies in the present cases. [10] The only attempt in this Court to carry the right to counsel into the station house occurred in Escobedo, the Court repeating several times that that stage was no less critical than trial itself. See 378 U. S., 485-488. This is hardly persuasive when we consider that a grand jury inquiry, the filing of a certiorari petition, and certainly the purchase of narcotics by an undercover agent from a prospective defendant may all be equally critical yet provision of counsel and advice on that score have never been thought compelled by the Constitution in such cases. The sound reason why this right is so freely extended for a criminal trial is the severe injustice risked by confronting an untrained defendant with a range of technical points of law, evidence, and tactics familiar to the prosecutor but not to himself. This danger shrinks markedly in the police station where indeed the lawyer in fulfilling his professional responsibilities of necessity may become an obstacle to truthfinding. See infra, n. 12. The Court's summary citation of the Sixth Amendment cases here seems to me best described as the domino method of constitutional adjudication . . . wherein every explanatory statement in a previous opinion is made the basis for extension to a wholly different situation. Friendly, supra, n. 10, at 950.