Court Opinion

ID: 9648384
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 14:18:01.143731+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:59.789968
License: Public Domain

DONNELLY, Judge
(concurring).
I concur in the principal opinion but desire to direct attention to relatively recent expressions by the United States Supreme Court on procedures for determining vol-untariness of confessions:
(1) In Lego v. Twomey, 404 U.S. 477, 489, 490, 92 S.Ct. 619, 627, 30 L.Ed.2d 618 (1972), the Court said: “We also reject petitioner’s final contention that, even though the trial judge ruled on his coercion claim, he was entitled to have the jury decide the claim anew. To the extent this argument asserts that the judge’s determination was insufficiently reliable, it is no more persuasive than petitioner’s other contentions. To the extent the position assumes that a jury is better suited than a judge to determine voluntariness, it questions the basic assumptions of Jackson v. Denno; it also ignores that Jackson neither raised any question about the constitutional validity of the so-called orthodox rule for judging the admissibility of confessions nor even suggested that the Constitution requires submission of voluntariness claims to a jury as well as a judge. Finally, Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 145, 194, 88 S.Ct. 1444, 20 L.Ed.2d 491 [522] (1968), which made the Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury applicable to the States, did not purport to change the normal rule that the admissibility of evidence is a question for the court rather than the jury. Nor did that decision require that both judge and jury pass upon the admissibility of evidence when constitutional grounds are asserted for excluding it. We are not disposed to impose as a constitutional requirement a procedure, we have found wanting merely to afford petitioner a second forum for litigating his claim.”
(2) In Swenson v. Stidham, 409 U.S. 224, 230, 93 S.Ct. 359, 363, 34 L.Ed.2d 431 (1972), the Court agreed with our conclusion that “the Jackson v. Denno error, if any, was sufficiently remedied.” However, the Court then said:
“This, of course, does not end the matter. A state prisoner is free to resort to federal habeas corpus with the claim that, contrary to a state court’s judgment, his confession was involuntary and inadmissi*549ble as a matter of law. Neither the District Court nor the Court of Appeals reached this issue. We are asked to decide the question here but it is not our function to deal with this issue in the first instance.
“The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit is reversed and the cause is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”
It would seem accurate to say that, at least since 1966 (State v. Washington, 399 S.W.2d 109 (Mo.1966) ; Stidham v. Swenson, 443 F.2d 1327 (8th Cir. 1971), we have followed the Massachusetts practice in determining the voluntariness of confessions. It was described in Commonwealth v. Marshall, 338 Mass. 460, 155 N.E.2d 798, 800 (1959), as follows: “That practice has been referred to in Commonwealth v. Lee, 324 Mass. 714, 720, 88 N.E.2d 713, as a ‘humane practice,’ giving the defendant two chances: first before the presiding judge who may decide to exclude the statements; and then before the jury who may disregard them. If the judge excludes them, the particular testimony is never heard by the jury; if the judge determines that they are competent, the jury may nevertheless disregard them.”
In view of the holdings in Lego v. Twomey and Swenson v. Stidham, supra, I believe we should, if and when the question is presented to us on appeal, review the practice of submitting to the jury the issue of voluntariness of a confession. (See Missouri cases cited in Jackson v. Denno, 378 U.S. 368, at 397 and 415, 84 S.Ct. 1774, 12 L.Ed.2d 908) I do not take an irreversible position on the question at this time. However, now that an accused is assured that the voluntariness of his confession will be determined by state judges (State v. Stidham, 449 S.W.2d 634 (Mo. 1970)), and then by federal judges (Swen-son v. Stidham, supra), I doubt that he needs the protection of a jury determination.