Court Opinion

ID: 9449122
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 23:57:42.065928+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:42.810606
License: Public Domain

WILBUR K. MILLER, Chief Judge
(dissenting).
The dissenting opinions of Judges Danaher and Burger, with which I fully agree, clearly demonstrate the unsoundness of the reasoning of the majority’s opinion, so that it is unnecessary for me to discuss the case in detail. But, like Judge Bastían, I want to express my deep concern over the majority’s disposition of this case. It is another example of what I think is this court’s tendency unduly to emphasize technicalities which protect criminals and hamper law enforcement, against which I have repeatedly protested.
Under our system of criminal law, the legal rights of a defendant must be protected even if the result is prejudice to the public. But justice does not require that those rights be exaggerated so as to protect the defendant against the consequences of his criminal act in a factual situation where he is not entitled to protection. That would be more than justice to the defendant, and unjustifiable prejudice to the public. In our concern for criminals, we should not forget that nice people have some rights too.
It is shocking to me that upon such tortured grounds the court reverses the conviction of this man who has confessed to a bizarre and brutal murder. Of course he can be tried again; but the exclusion of his confession, freely and voluntarily given after he had been told of his rights, which he evidently knew quite well already, will make it unnecessarily difficult to obtain a conviction at a second trial.