Court Opinion

ID: 9422148
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:01:28.346169+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:34.601293
License: Public Domain

Me. Justice Stewart,
whom Mr. Justice Clark joins,
dissenting.
Although the matter is not free from doubt, I accept the Court’s conclusion that both state courts gave some weight to the probable truth of the confessions in determining that they were voluntary.* But I cannot accept the proposition that the petitioner is entitled to his release by way of federal habeas corpus merely because of the state courts’ failure properly to verbalize the correct Fourteenth Amendment test of admissibility. Cf. Stroble v. California, 343 U. S. 181.
The writ can be extended to Rogers only if he is “in custody in violation of the Constitution or laws or treaties of the United States.” 28 U. S. C. § 2241 (c)(3). See Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U. S. 458, 465-468; Hawk v. Olson, 326 U. S. 271, 274-276. In the context of the present case this means that the writ should be granted, if, and *550only if, a coerced confession was in fact admitted at the trial. See Leyra v. Denno, 347 U. S. 556. I think, as did the District Court, that in deciding that question the appropriate inquiry for the habeas corpus court is not what test of admissibility the State applied or purported to apply, but whether a confession was admitted which was in fact involuntary under Fourteenth Amendment standards.
I would, therefore, remand the case to the District Court for a plenary hearing to determine this question. Where, as here, the state trial court’s determination of admissibility was at least partly affected by the impermissible factor of probable reliability, I think there can be no question of the federal court’s duty to hold such a hearing. While the state court’s failure to enunciate the correct standard was not itself an error of constitutional dimensions, it did make impossible the federal court’s unquestioning reliance on the trial court’s findings of fact. Even the most narrow view of what was said in Brown v. Allen, 344 U. S. 443, would require a plenary hearing in these circumstances.

In Connecticut the jury plays no part in determining the volun-tariness of a confession. Connecticut follows the orthodox rule of leaving the determination of admissibility exclusively to the trial judge. State v. McCarthy, 133 Conn. 171, 177, 49 A. 2d 594, 597; State v. Guastamachio, 137 Conn. 179, 182, 75 A. 2d 429, 431; State v. Lorain, 141 Conn. 694, 699, 109 A. 2d 504, 507. Compare Stein v. New York, 346 U. S. 156. If a confession is admitted, the jury is left to weigh its truthfulness as it weighs other evidence. There is no claim in this case of any error in the instructions to the jury.