Opinion ID: 1451206
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Colorado v. Connelly

Text: In Connelly, Connelly approached a police officer in downtown Denver and, without any prompting, confessed to a murder. Id. at 160, 107 S.Ct. at 518. The officer immediately advised him of his Miranda rights. Id. Connelly replied that he understood his rights but still wanted to talk about the murder. Id. at 160, 107 S.Ct. at 518. Connelly also stated to the police officer that he had been a patient in several mental hospitals. Id. After another police officer arrived, Connelly was again advised of his rights and was asked what he had on his mind. Id. Connelly answered that he had come all the way from Boston to confess to the murder of a young girl who had been killed in Denver in late 1982. Id. After being held overnight, Connelly became visibly disoriented the next morning and stated for the first time that voices had told him to come to Denver and confess. Id. at 161, 107 S.Ct. at 518. Connelly was then sent to a state hospital and evaluated by a psychiatrist. Id. At a preliminary hearing before a Colorado trial court, Connelly moved to suppress his statements to the police. Id. at 161, 107 S.Ct. at 519. The psychiatrist who evaluated Connelly testified that Connelly was experiencing command hallucinations and that this psychotic condition had motivated his confession but had not impaired his ability to understand his Miranda rights. Id. The Colorado trial court ruled that the initial statements and the custodial confession must be suppressed because they were involuntary, although the police had done nothing coercive in securing them. Id. at 162, 107 S.Ct. at 519. The Supreme Court of Colorado affirmed, holding that the admission of the evidence would violate the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment to the United States Constitution, and that Connelly's mental condition had precluded his ability to make a valid waiver of his Miranda rights. Id. The Colorado Supreme Court further stated that the issue of voluntariness must be resolved by evaluating the totality of circumstances and that the absence of police coercion or duress did not foreclose a finding of involuntariness. Id. The court stated that the ultimate test of voluntariness is whether the statement was the product of a rational intellect and free will, and declared that free will may be overborne as much by certain forms of severe mental illness as by external pressure. Id. The court also concluded that admitting Connelly's confession constituted state action in violation of the fourteenth amendment, stating that [s]tate action enters the picture ... when a trial court permits the prosecution ... to utilize [an involuntary confession] as evidence of guilt. Id. On certiorari, the United States Supreme Court reversed and remanded. Writing for six members of the Court, Chief Justice Rehnquist held that coercive police activity is a necessary predicate to the finding that a confession is not `voluntary' within the meaning of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. [3] Id. at 167, 107 S.Ct. at 522. Therefore, because Connelly had not been coerced by the police into making his incriminating statements, the Court concluded that the admission of his confession into evidence would not constitute a constitutional violation. Id. The Supreme Court noted that precedent demonstrated that police overreaching has been a crucial element in its confession cases for fifty years. Id. at 163, 107 S.Ct. at 520. The Court also rejected the Colorado Supreme Court's conclusion that admitting Connelly's confession would constitute state action, noting that the Colorado Supreme Court had failed to recognize the essential link between coercive activity of the State and a resulting confession. Id. at 165, 107 S.Ct. at 521. The Court further stated that courts should exclude illegally obtained evidence only to deter future constitutional violations, and that excluding Connelly's confession would serve absolutely no purpose in enforcing constitutional guarantees. Id. at 166, 107 S.Ct. at 521. Justice Brennan, in a dissent joined by Justice Marshall, argued that admitting the involuntary confession of a mentally ill person is antithetical to the notion of fundamental fairness embodied in the Due Process Clause. Id. at 174, 107 S.Ct. at 525. Justice Brennan objected to the majority's focus on deterring police misconduct, arguing that the majority ignored two hundred years of constitutional jurisprudence by giving insufficient weight to the value of free will and to the goal of protecting private conscience and human dignity. [4] Id. at 176, 107 S.Ct. at 526. He also rejected the majority's view that admitting an involuntary confession did not constitute state action, asserting that the due process clause requires courts, like all other state agencies to act in accordance with the fundamental principles of liberty and justice. Id. at 180, 107 S.Ct. at 529 (citations omitted). Several law review articles have also been critical of the Supreme Court's decision in Connelly. A Harvard Law Review comment, concluded, that Connelly was unnecessarily broad and departed from both precedent and the values underlying the privilege against self-incrimination, and was likely to lead to fundamental unfairness. Comment, Right Against Self Incrimination  Involuntary Confessions, 101 Harv.L.Rev. 179 (1987). The article further stated that: [t]he privilege against self-incrimination protects suspects' free will from external interference. It also is founded on perhaps the most basic constitutional value, the respect a government  state or federal  must accord to the dignity and integrity of its citizens. However, any person who coerces a confession necessarily violates a suspect's dignity by overriding his free will, and the state participates in that violation by allowing coerced statements to be used as evidence. Therefore, admitting coerced confessions, no matter who coerced them, is fundamentally unfair. Admitting confessions coerced by third parties is also contrary to precedent. Both state and federal courts have ruled that confessions coerced by private parties or foreign policemen are inadmissible and the Supreme Court itself excluded a confession coerced by a foreign policeman in Bram v. United States. Id. at 186-87 (footnotes omitted). Similarly, a Texas Law Review article criticized Connelly as being insupportable and was especially critical of the Court's rejection of trial reliability and free and unrestrained choice as interests protected by the federal constitutional confession doctrine. Dix, Federal Constitutional Confession Law: The 1986 and 1987 Supreme Court Terms, 67 Tex.L.Rev. 231, 271, 275-76, 289, 305, 313 (1988). Specifically addressing the Court's holding that police coercion is a necessary predicate to a finding that a confession is involuntary, the Texas Law Review article argued: [i]f due process protects a defendant's interest in trial accuracy, the use of a confession obtained through private coercion may infringe on it. The reliability of an overtly coerced confession probably does not depend on whether the coercion is governmental or private. If due process protects a suspect's dignity interest in being free from the use of self-incriminating admissions unless those admissions reflect a free choice to submit to criminal liability, use of a coerced confession probably offends this interest whether governmental or private factors caused the absence of freedom of choice. If however, the only purpose of federal constitutional law is to control official activity that threatens federal constitutional interests, private coercion is irrelevant to admissibility. Connelly constitutionalizes that position. If the Connelly analysis remains controlling, lower courts must accept the dicta regarding private coercion  whether or not it is consistent with pre-Connelly voluntariness law. Id. As a final note, the article urged state tribunals to reject the Supreme Court's decision as a model and independently consider how constitutional law should regulate law enforcement interrogation activity and a suspect's decision to confess. Id. at 347-49. To this end, the author suggested that courts look to their state constitutional requirements and statutory provisions addressing the requirements for the admissibility of confessions and develop their own confession law doctrines. Id.; see also Dix, Voluntariness and Intelligence of Confessions as Independent Texas Law Issues, 20 Tex.Tech L.Rev. 1021, 1095 (1989) (Texas courts should reject the Connelly approach as a matter of state law). The foregoing criticism, perhaps, explains why state courts have inconsistently applied Connelly to their cases involving confessions coerced by private action. [5] See People v. Bernasco, 185 Ill.App.3d 480, 133 Ill.Dec. 563, 541 N.E.2d 774 (1989), aff'd, 138 Ill.2d 349, 150 Ill.Dec. 155, 562 N.E.2d 958 (1990), cert. denied, 500 U.S. 932, 111 S.Ct. 2052, 114 L.Ed.2d 458 (1991) (noting with approval commentary critical of Connelly, court declined to decide issue based on Connelly, and affirmed suppression of confession based on finding that defendant did not voluntarily waive his fifth amendment rights). See also People v. Seymour, 188 Mich.App. 480, 470 N.W.2d 428, 430 (1991) (without addressing Connelly, court held that confession coerced by a private citizen can also render the statement involuntary and inadmissible); People v. Whitehead, 116 Ill.2d 425, 438, 108 Ill.Dec. 376, 380, 508 N.E.2d 687, 691, cert. denied, 484 U.S. 933, 108 S.Ct. 307, 98 L.Ed.2d 266 (1987) (without referring to Connelly, court held that statements made to police after Defendant's sister-in-law visited with him in the interrogation room were admissible because the defendant's sister-in-law was not acting as a police instrumentality); State v. Foster, 303 Or. 518, 525, 739 P.2d 1032, 1036 (1987) (confession induced by private threats is inadmissible under a state statute that applies to all confessions); State v. McCullough, 56 Wash.App. 655, 784 P.2d 566, review denied, 114 Wash.2d 1025, 793 P.2d 976 (1990) (relying on Connelly, court held that the coercive conduct of a private person does not raise an error of constitutional magnitude); Darghty v. State, 530 So.2d 27, 31 (Miss.1988) (citing Connelly, court held a confession resulting from coercion by defendant's wife was admissible).