Court Opinion

ID: 9451920
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:27:02.859695+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:58.371295
License: Public Domain

EDGERTON, Senior Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
The government concedes that the appellant “was held at the point of the officer’s gun all of the time.” The officer had disarmed and searched him before the question was asked and answered.
“[T]he will is as much affected by fear as by force. * * * When a suspect speaks because he is overborne, it is immaterial whether he has been subjected to a physical or a mental ordeal.” Watts v. State of Indiana, 338 U.S. 49, 52, 53. 69 S.Ct. 1347, 1349, 1350, 93 L.Ed. 1801 (1949). It is likewise immaterial whether he has been subjected legally or illegally. If what the officer did was legal it was nonetheless frightening, and what the appellant said in answer to the officer’s question was therefore inadmissible, whether or not the officer himself was and had cause to be frightened, and whether or not his act was necessary in self-defense or to maintain the arrest. I do not see how it can be doubted that a policeman who holds a gun pointed at an unarmed prisoner subjects him to a frightening experience. In the prisoner’s situation, I think it would take considerably more fortitude than most of us have to refuse to answer the policeman’s question. But that my brethren think otherwise, I should have thought it clear beyond argument’ that the appellant’s statement was involuntary as a matter of law and that the conviction must therefore be reversed.
We have said it is “generally” necessary for a defendant to take the stand to substantiate a contention that his confession was involuntary. Wright v. United States, 102 U.S.App.D.C. 36, 45, 250 F.2d 4, 13 (1957). But we said on the same page that if there is no evidence which could support a conclusion that a confession was voluntary, the court “must exclude the confession”. This means, among other things, that in such a case it is not necessary for the defendant to take the stand. Since there is no evidence in the present record that the confession was voluntary, obviously there is no evi*964dence which could support a conclusion that it was voluntary. It appears to me that a confession obtained at gun point can no more be found to have been given voluntarily than a watch obtained at gun point can be found to have been given voluntarily.
I would reverse.