Court Opinion

ID: 9425754
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:15:45.407953+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:57.376054
License: Public Domain

*453Mr. Justice Stewart,
concurring.
In joining the opinion of the Court, I add only that I could also join Mr. Justice Brennan's concurrence. For it seems to me that despite differences in phraseology, and despite the disclaimers of their respective authors, the Court opinion and that of Mr. Justice Brennan proceed along virtually parallel lines, give or take a couple of argumentative footnotes.
Mr. Justice Brennan,
with whom Mr. Justice Marshall joins,
concurring in the judgment.
The Court finds it unnecessary to decide “the broad question” of whether the fruits of “statements taken in violation of the Miranda rules must be excluded regardless of when the interrogation took place,” ante, at 447, since respondent’s interrogation occurred prior to our decision in Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436 (1966). In my view, however, it is unnecessary, too, for the Court to address the narrower question of whether the principles of Miranda require that fruits be excluded when obtained as a result of a pre-Miranda interrogation without the requisite prior warnings. The Court, in answering this question, proceeds from the premise that Johnson v. New Jersey, 384 U. S. 719 (1966), makes Miranda applicable to all cases in which a criminal trial was commenced after the date of our decision in Miranda, *454and that, since respondent’s trial was post-Miranda, the effect of Miranda on this case must be resolved. I would not read Johnson as making Miranda applicable to this case.1
Frank acknowledgment that retroactive application of newly announced constitutional rules of criminal procedure may have a serious impact on the administration of criminal justice has led us, since Linkletter v. Walker, 381 U. S. 618 (1965), to determine retroactivity in terms of three criteria: (1) the purpose served by the new rules; (2) the extent of law enforcement officials’ justifiable reliance on prior standards; and (3) the effect on the administration of justice of a retroactive application of the new rules. See, e. g., Michigan v. Payne, 412 U. S. 47, 51 (1973); Stovall v. Denno, 388 U. S. 293, 297 (1967); Tehan v. United States ex rel. Shott; 382 U. S. 406, 410-418 (1966). We have as a general matter limited our discussion of the relevant “purpose” of new rules to their functional value in enhancing the reliability of the factfinding process. See, e. g., Williams v. United States, 401 U. S. 646, 653 (1971); id., at 663 (concurring opinion) ; Desist v. United States, 394 U. S. 244, 249-250 (1969); Roberts v. Russell, 392 U. S. 293, 294 (1968); Tehan v. United States ex rel. Shott, supra; Linkletter v. Walker, supra, at 638-639. This limiting approach has been taken in recognition that “[t]he basic purpose of a trial is the determination of truth,” Tehan v. United States ex rel. Shott, supra, at 416; see Stovall v. Denno, supra, at 297-298, and that the principal legitimate interest of a convicted defendant is therefore assur-*455anee that the factfinding process at his trial was not unduly impaired by adherence to the old standards.
In Johnson v. New Jersey, supra, the Court was called upon to determine whether the newly announced procedures in Miranda v. Arizona should be retroactively applied to upset final convictions based in part upon confessions obtained without the prior warnings required by Miranda. Aware that Miranda provided new safeguards against the possible use at trial of unreliable statements of the accused, we nonetheless concluded that the decision should not be retroactively applied.2 The prob*456ability that the truth-determining process was distorted by, and individuals were convicted on the basis of, coerced confessions was minimized, we found, by the availability of strict pr e-Miranda standards to test the voluntariness of confessions. 384 U. S., at 730. In addition, we recognized that law enforcement agencies had justifiably relied on our prior rulings and that retroactive application would necessitate the wholesale release and subsequent retrial of vast numbers of prisoners. Id., at 731. Then, in statements unnecessary to our decision — since all of the convictions of the petitioners in Johnson had long since become final at the time of our decision in Miranda — we went on to say that our newly announced Miranda rules should be applied to trials begun after the date that decision was announced. Id., at 732.
The conclusion that the Miranda rules should be applied to post-Miranda trials made good sense, where criminal defendants were seeking to exclude direct statements made without prior warning of their rights. Exclusion of possibly unreliable pr e-Miranda statements made in the inherently coercive atmosphere of in-custody interrogation, see Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S., at 457-458, 467, 470, could be obtained at a relatively low cost. For, although the police might have relied in good faith on our prior rulings in interrogating defendants without first advising them of their rights, Miranda put the police on notice that pre-Miranda confessions obtained without prior warnings would be inadmissible at defendants' trials. *457Since defendants who had made pre-Miranda confessions had not yet gone to trial, and the police investigations into those cases were still fresh, Johnson envisioned “no undue burden [being] imposed upon prosecuting authorities by requiring them to find evidentiary substitutes for statements obtained in violation of the constitutional protections afforded by Miranda.” Jenkins v. Delaware, 395 U. S. 213, 219-220 (1969); see Johnson v. New Jersey, 384 U. S., at 732.
Application of the Miranda standards to the present case, however, presents entirely different problems. Unlike the situation contemplated in Johnson, the burden imposed upon law enforcement officials to obtain eviden-tiary substitutes for inadmissible “fruits” will likely be substantial. The lower courts, confronted with the question of the application of Miranda to fruits, have provided differing answers on the admissibility issue.3 The police, therefore, could not reasonably have been expected to know that substitute evidence would be necessary. As a result, in a case such as the present one, in which law enforcement officials have relied on trial and appellate court determinations that fruits are admissible, a contrary ruling by this Court, coming years after the commission of the crime, would severely handicap any attempt to retry the defendant. The burden on law enforcement officers, in that circumstance, would be comparable to that in Jenkins v. Delaware, swpra, where we declined to apply the Miranda rules to post-Miranda retrials of persons whose original trials were commenced prior to Miranda. There, we said:
“[C]oncern for the justifiable reliance of law enforce*458ment officials upon pre-Miranda standards militates against applying Miranda to retrials .... As we stated in Stovall [v. Denno, supra], ‘[I]nquiry would be handicapped by the unavailability of witnesses and dim memories.’ 388 U. S., at 300. The burden would be particularly onerous where an investigation was closed years prior to a retrial because law enforcement officials relied in good faith upon a strongly incriminating statement, admissible at the first, trial, to provide the cornerstone of the prosecution’s case.” 395 U. S., at 220 (footnote omitted).
Moreover, the element of unreliability — a legitimate concern in Johnson because of the inherently coercive nature of in-custody interrogation — is of less importance when the admissibility of “fruits” is at issue. There is no reason to believe that the coercive atmosphere of the station house will have any effect whatsoever on the trustworthiness of “fruits.”
Since excluding the fruits of respondent’s statements would not further the integrity of the factfinding process and would severely handicap law enforcement officials in obtaining evidentiary substitutes, I would confine the reach of Johnson v. New Jersey to those cases in which the direct statements of an accused made during a pre-Miranda interrogation were introduced at his post-Miranda trial. If Miranda is applicable at all to the fruits of statements made without proper warnings, I would limit its effect to those cases in which the fruits were obtained as a result of post-Miranda interrogations. Cf. Stovall v. Denno, 388 U. S. 293 (1967); Desist v. United States, 394 U. S. 244 (1969).4
*459Since I agree that the judgment of the Court of Appeals must be reversed, I concur in the judgment of the Court.5
*460Mr. Justice White,
concurring in the judgment.
For the reasons stated in my dissent in that case, I continue to think that Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U. S. 436 (1966), was ill-conceived and without warrant in the Constitution. However that may be, the Miranda opinion did not deal with the admissibility of evidence derived from in-custody admissions obtained without the specified warnings, and the matter has not been settled by subsequent cases.
In Orozco v. Texas, 394 U. S. 324 (1969), it appeared that petitioner, who was convicted of murder, had been arrested and interrogated in his home without the benefit of Miranda warnings. Among other things, petitioner admitted having a gun and told the police where it was hidden in the house. The gun was recovered and ballistic tests, which were admitted into evidence along with various oral admissions, showed that it was the gun involved in the murder. Petitioner’s conviction was affirmed, the applicability of Miranda being rejected by the state courts. Petitioner brought the case here, urging in his petition for certiorari, which was granted, that the ballistic evidence was a fruit of an illegal interrogation — “the direct product of interrogation” without indispensable constitutional safeguards. His brief on the merits suggested that it was error under Miranda to admit into evidence either his oral admissions or the evidence of ballistic tests performed on the pistol, which *461was referred to as “an illegally seized object.” This Court reversed the conviction but after referring to the ballistic evidence, went on to hold only that the admission into evidence of Orozco’s statements made without benefit of Miranda warnings was fatal error. Although the issue was presented, the Court did not expressly deal with the admissibility of the ballistic tests and gave no intimation that the evidence was to be excluded at the anticipated retrial.
Miranda having been applied in this Court only to the exclusion of the defendant’s own statements, I would not extend its prophylactic scope to bar the testimony of third persons even though they have been identified by means of admissions that are themselves inadmissible under Miranda. The arguable benefits from excluding such testimony by way of possibly deterring police conduct that might compel admissions are, in my view, far outweighed by the advantages of having relevant and probative testimony, not obtained by actual coercion, available at criminal trials to aid in the pursuit of truth. The same results would not necessarily obtain with respect to the fruits of involuntary confessions. I therefore concur in the judgment.

 Although the petition for certiorari did not urge us to limit the effect of Johnson v. New Jersey, this issue was raised in petitioner’s brief as well as in the amicus curiae brief of the State of California, filed in support of petitioner. See Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U. S. 643, 646 n. 3 (1961); Stovall v. Denno, 388 U. S. 293, 294 n. 1 (1967).

 In Johnson we commented — as we have on a number of occasions in deciding to apply new constitutional rules of criminal procedure retroactively — that “we do not disparage a constitutional guarantee in any manner by declining to apply it retroactively.” 384 U. S., at 728; Michigan v. Payne, 412 U. S. 47, 55 n. 10 (1973). This is so, because a prospective application of new rules will often serve important purposes other than the correction of serious flaws in the truth-determining process.
The Fifth Amendment privilege against compulsory self-incrimination — guaranteed full effectuation by the Miranda rules — serves a variety of significant purposes not relevant to the truth-determining process. See Tehan v. United States ex rel. Shott, 382 U. S. 406, 415-416 (1966). A number of these purposes were catalogued in Murphy v. Waterfront Comm’n, 378 U. S. 52, 55 (1964):
“The privilege against self-incrimination ‘registers an important advance in the development of our liberty — “one of the great landmarks in man’s struggle to make himself civilized.” ’ Ullmann v. United States, 350 U. S. 422, 426. It reflects many of our fundamental values and most noble aspirations: our unwillingness to subject those suspected of crime to the cruel trilemma of self-accusation, perjury or contempt; our preference for an accusatorial rather than an inquisitorial system of criminal justice; our fear that self-incriminating statements will be elicited by inhumane treatment and abuses; our sense of fair play which dictates ‘a fair state-individual balance by requiring the government to leave the individual alone until good cause is shown for disturbing him and by requiring the government in its contest with the individual to shoulder the entire load,’ 8 Wigmore, Evidence (McNaughton rev., 1961), 317; our *456respect for the inviolability of the human personality and of the right of each individual 'to a private enclave where he may lead a private life,' United States v. Grunewald, 233 F. 2d 556, 581-582 (Frank, J., dissenting), rev’d 353 U. S. 391; our distrust of self-deprecatory statements; and our realization that the privilege, while sometimes 'a shelter to the guilty,’ is often ‘a protection to the innocent.’ Quinn v. United States, 349 U. S. 155, 162.” (Footnotes omitted.)

 Compare the decisions of the Michigan courts in the instant case, 19 Mich. App. 320, 172 N. W. 2d 712 (1969), and 385 Mich. 594, 189 N. W. 2d 290 (1971), with United States v. Cassell, 452 F. 2d 533 (CA7 1971), and People v. Peacock, 29 App. Div. 2d 762, 287 N.Y. S. 2d 166 (1968).

 Three approaches have been taken in deciding what cases should be affected by prospective application of new constitutional rules of criminal procedure. In Linkletter v. Walker, 381 U. S. 618 (1965), the Court held the exclusionary rule of Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U. S. 643 *459(1961), applicable to all cases in which direct review had not come to an- end at the time Mapp was announced. See also Tehan v. United States ex rel. Shott, 382 U. S. 406 (1966). That approach, as we have observed, was abandoned in Johnson v. New Jersey, where we stated that the Miranda rules were applicable to all trials commenced after the date of that decision. In more recent decisions, we have regarded the cutoff point as that at which law enforcement officials could first begin to guide their conduct in accordance with our new rules. Thus, in Stovall v. Denno, 388 U. S. 293 (1967), the confrontation rulings of United States v. Wade, 388 U. S. 218 (1967), and Gilbert v. California, 388 U. S. 263 (1967), were made applicable to eases in which the confrontations took place after the date of those decisions, and in Desist v. United States, 394 U. S. 244 (1969), the exclusionary ruling of Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347 (1967), was made applicable only to cases in which the search and seizure took place after the announcement of Katz. See also Michigan v. Payne, 412 U. S. 47, 57 n. 15 (1973); Williams v. United States, 401 U. S. 646, 656-657 (1971). But cf. Fuller v. Alaska, 393 U. S. 80, 81 (1968) (holding that Lee v. Florida, 392 U. S. 378 (1968), which ruled evidence seized in violation of § 605 of the Federal Communications Act, 47 U. S. C. § 605, inadmissible in state trials, applicable to all cases in which the evidence was introduced after the date of decision in Lee).
The trend of our decisions since Johnson has thus been toward placing increased emphasis upon the point at which law enforcement personnel initially relied upon the discarded constitutional standards. See Jenkins v. Delazoare, 395 U. S. 213, 218 and n. 7 (1969). As has been noted by an eminent judicial authority, such an emphasis is wholly consistent with the underlying rationale for prospective application of new rules, i. e., justified reliance upon prior judicial standards. Schaefer, The Control of “Sunbursts”: Techniques of Prospective Overruling, 42 N. Y. U. L. Rev. 631, 645-646 (1967). •

 My Brother Rehnquist argues that this concurrence “marks a significant and unsettling departure from the past practice of the Court” in respect of retroactivity. Ante, at 452 n. 26. He argues that Miranda did not decide the question of the admissibility of fruits, and therefore that there is no “parent” decision for retroactive application. But the assumption upon which the concurrence rests, *460namely, that Miranda requires the exclusion of fruits, necessarily treats Miranda as a “parent” decision. For the assumption is that exclusion is necessary to give full effect to the purposes and policies underlying the Miranda rules and to its holding that “unless and until [the Miranda) warnings and waiver are demonstrated by the prosecution at trial, no evidence obtained as a result of interrogation can be used against [the defendant].” 384 U. S., at 479 (emphasis added). It necessarily follows that Miranda itself is the “parent” decision.