Court Opinion

ID: 9423507
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:08:03.979595+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:44.631124
License: Public Domain

*39Mr. Justice Brennan,
whom The Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Douglas join.
I concur in the judgment of reversal. This confession was taken after our decision in Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U. S. 1. Under the test of admissibility stated in Malloy, the facts plainly compel the Court’s conclusion that the petitioner’s confession was inadmissible because involuntary. We said in Malloy, at 7:
“. . . the admissibility of a confession in a state criminal prosecution is tested by the same standard applied in federal prosecutions since 1897, when, in Bram v. United States, 168 U. S. 532, the Court held that ‘[i]n criminal trials, in the courts of the United States, wherever a question arises whether a confession is incompetent because not voluntary, the issue is controlled by that portion of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, commanding that no person "shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” ’ Id., at 542. Under this test, the constitutional inquiry is not whether the conduct of state officers in obtaining the confession was shocking, but whether the confession was ‘free and voluntary: that is, [it] must not be extracted by any sort of threats or violence, nor obtained by any direct or implied promises, however slight, nor by the exertion of any improper influence. . . .’ Id., at 542-543; see also Hardy v. United States, 186 U. S. 224, 229; Wan v. United States, 266 U. S. 1, 14; Smith v. United States, 348 U. S. 147, 150.”