Court Opinion

ID: 9825837
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 14:07:50.090975+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:41:23.717171
License: Public Domain

ON REHEARING George Rose Smith, J. In párt VII of our original opinion in this case we held that the trial court correctly refused an instruction that would have told the jury not to consider the accused’s confession unless they found it to have been made “without any inquisitorial methods.” We pointed out that the jury could properly have taken-this language to mean that the confession could not be considered if it was obtained by the sheriff in the course of an inquiry or investigation. Hence the proposed instruction did not correctly state the law, for we have held that even persistent questioning by officers does not vitiate a confession that is otherwise properly obtained. Greenwood v. State, 107 Ark. 568, 156 S. W. 427. We adhere to the view that in this case the requested instruction was correctly refused. In his petition for rehearing, however, the appellant insists that earlier opinions of this court have approved the phrase “inquisitorial methods.” It is true that we have used the expression on more than one occasion, but in every instance the context has made it perfectly clear that something more than mere questioning was meant. For instance, in Spurgeon v. State, 160 Ark. 112, 254 S. W. 376, we stated that of course the officers had the right to interrogate the accused, but they had no right to coerce him “by a continuous inquisition persisted in to the extent of exhausting him physically and mentally and overcoming his will. ’ ’ The distinction made in that case is exactly the one that is ignored in the instruction offered by appellant. Again in Dewein v. State, 114 Ark. 472, 170 S. W. 582, we used this language: “Where threats of harm, promises of favor or benefit, inflictions of pain, a show of violence or inquisitorial methods are used to extort a confession, then the confession is • attributed to such methods.” There the whole context culminated in the phrase “extort a confession,” which of course means to wrest it by-force, menace, duress, torture, etc. Indeed, Webster’s New International Dictionary gives the phrase, “to extort confessions,” as illustrative of correct usage. No doubt the opinion in the Dewein case led to the instruction quoted in Robinson v. State, 177 Ark. 534, 7 S. W. 2d 5, in which the language of the earlier opinion—including the word “extort”—is embodied almost verbatim. Thus it is clear that our earlier cases have sanctioned a reference to inquisitorial methods only when the context brings out the difference between a permissible investigation and a prohibited extortion. The failure to make this distinction is the vice in the instruction offered below, for the instruction would have misled the jury concerning the law. The petition for rehearing is denied.