Court Opinion

ID: 9443070
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 19:10:17.128432+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:21.933449
License: Public Domain

FRANK, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
1. The first ground of my dissent is what I deem a flagrant violation of the so-called “MeNabb rule.” 1 That rule renders a confession inadmissible in a federal trial if obtained in violation of the requirement, now set forth in Criminal Rule 5(a), that “An officer making an arrest * * * *858shall take the arrested person without unnecessary delay before the nearest available commissioner or before any other nearby officer empowered to commit persons charged with offenses against the laws of the United States.” The purpose of the McNabb rule is to procure for an arrested person the following protections offered by Rule 5(b) governing the arraignment procedure: “The Commissioner shall inform the defendant of the complaint against him, of his right to retain counsel and of his right to have a preliminary examination. He shall also inform the defendant that he is not required to make a statement and that any statement made by him may be used against him. The commissioner shall allow the defendant reasonable time and opportunity to consult counsel and shall admit the defendant to bail as provided in these rules.” As the Supreme Court said just the other day, in United States v. Carignan, 72 S.Ct. 97, 102, the McNabb rule rests on the idea that detention without prompt arraignment gives “opportunity for improper pressure * * * before the accused had the benefit of the statement by the commissioner.” 2
Now see how and why Levitón was deprived of that benefit: After several weeks of shadowing, four customs agents entered his office at 1:45 P.M. on Thursday, March 25. The agents announced that he was wanted for questioning at Customs headquarters, and directed him to bring along his export files. The customs agents had no warrant for his arrest. They did not warn him that anything he said would be used against him; they did not advise him of his right to counsel; they made no attempt to arraign him before a magistrate or judge. The agents admitted that, once inside the building, Levitón could not leave:
“Q. Isn’t it a fact, Mr. Linden, that Mr. Levitón could not have left the building if he desired ? A. I wouldn’t have permitted him to leave the building.
“Q. Why? A. Because we wanted to talk to him and find out about the other phases of the case.
“Q. You were the agent in charge of the entire investigation ? A. Yes sir.
“Q. So that on the occasion in question, if Mr. Levitón wanted to leave the building you would instruct them not to permit him to leave? A. Not until we were through, that is correct.
“Q. From the moment he was there until you were through with him, with the interrogation, you would not permit Mr. Levitón to leave the building? A. Not by himself.”
Since nothing significant occurred between the time the agents entered Leviton’s office and the time of his arrival at the building, plainly he would not have been allowed his freedom after 1:45 P. M. In short, he was under arrest from that moment. All afternoon and evening up to the time of his confession, he was kept under guard. The agent in charge of his case testified quite frankly that Leviton’s detention was solely for the agents’ convenience in interrogating him:
“Q. During the course of the afternoon, you were holding Mr. Levitón in your office until you could assign an agent to question him. Is that the idea ? A. That is correct.
“Q. The entire purpose of your detaining Mr. Levitón from the time he entered the building was for the purpose of interrogating him. Is that right? A. Yes, sir.”
At one point in the afternoon, around 3:00 or 3 :30, Levitón made a remark, according to his guard, that “he thought he could make a fast dishonest dollar but ap*859parently he couldn’t.” Soon another agent came into the room, asked Levitón a general question about flour shipments he had handled, mentioning no particular shipments or countries. Levitón told this agent to look up some files marked “Arthur Blumenfeld” in the Barr Shipping Company. The agent returned with the files at 6:30, and asked Levitón where certain declarations were; Levitón replied that he had destroyed them. Around 9:20, the interrogation began in earnest, and by midnight the defendant had signed a typewritten confession which ended thus: “I have been sitting here for nine hours. I have smoked 100 cigarettes, and I don’t know whether I am coming or going.” Levitón was taken then to the Federal House of - Detention and arraigned the next evening at 7:00 p.m. for the crimes to which he had confessed the previous night.
So Leviton’s confession came after 7j/¿ hours in custody. Even his admission (if it can be considered as such) that he had destroyed certain declarations came only after 4i^> hours of unauthorized .detention. At any time between approximately 1:45 and 5:30 that afternoon, Levitón might have been arraigned before any one of a dozen magistrates or judges in the vicinity. Prompt arraignment meant a great deal to Levitón; no warrant had ever been issued for his arrest; no magistrate had ever declared that there was any “probable cause” for holding him; he was denied altogether the “benefit of the statement by the commissioner” which the Supreme Court considers so important. Because of failure to arraign, he was not informed of the charges against him; he had no counsel; he was not warned, however perfunctorily, that what he said would be used against him— all this for the sole convenience of the customs men in interrogating him — and not, mind you, at once, but when (as one of them testified) they got ready to “assign an agent to question him.”
My colleagues say, nevertheless, that the delay in arraigning Levitón was a “necessary one,” and that, therefore, the McNabb rule was not violated. They rely on cases holding that delays are “necessary” if caused by unavailability of an arraigning officer when arrests are made at night, on Sunday, or over a holiday, since the rule was not intended to force magistrates to work around the clock. United States v. Walker, 2 Cir., 176 F.2d 564, certiorari denied 338 U.S. 891, 70 S.Ct. 239, 94 L.Ed. 547, was such a case. There the defendant was arrested on' Sunday before Labor Day in a small town. We there held that the delay before his arraignment on Tuesday was prima facie a reasonable one, and that the defendant had the burden of proving that it was “possible to arraign” him on Sunday or Monday. This, so far as I know, is the longest time any upper court has sanctioned between arrest and arraignment, and I do not hesitate to predict (despite my colleague’s insinuation that by the Walker case we have already gelded the McNabb Rule) that this court or any other court would unhesitatingly call unreasonable a week-end delay, upon a showing that the arrest was deliberately made on Saturday or a holiday to prevent prompt arraignment.3
*860Courts and commentators have conscientiously restricted the meaning of “necessary delay” to a single situation: “Reasonableness (of the delay) will probably depend upon the time required to carry the suspect to the commissioner, and not on the time desired to keep him away from the commissioner. The entire history of committal legislation leads to such an interpretation.” 4
The idea of allowing the police whatever delay before arraignment they may deem “necessary” for interrogation, fights with the basic aim of the McNabb rule: “It aims to avoid all the evil implications of secret interrogation of persons accused of crime.” McNabb v. U. S., 318 U.S. 332, 344, 63 S.Ct. 608, 614, 87 L.Ed. 819. In Upshaw v. United States, 335 U.S. 410, 69 S.Ct. 170, 172, 93 L.Ed. 100, where the Supreme Court vitiated a confession on the ground that it had been obtained during a detention which the police admitted .was for the sole purpose of investigation, the Court said: “In this case we are left in no doubt as to why this petitioner was not brought promptly before a committing magistrate, * * * because the officer thought there was ‘not a sufficient case’ for the court to hold him * * *. He admitted that petitioner was illegally detained for at least thirty hours for the very purpose of securing these challenged confessions.” The Upshaw situation, in every essential respect, is duplicated here. The Customs men make no pretense that Leviton’s 11-hour “visit” was for any other purpose than to facilitate their own investigation. Since Levitón was arrested without a warrant — I note again that no judicial officer had passed on the “probable cause” for his detention — the conclusion seems inescapable that he, like Upshaw, was being held so that the agents could get a good case against him before they had to justify his arrest to a magistrate. But clearly the police, after arrest, cannot make up for their lack of probable cause at the time of arrest. That is what McNabb is for — to make sure that they can’t. It should be even more “mechanically” applied in cases of arrests without warrants than in those with warrants.
My colleagues would excuse the failure to arraign here, on still another theory. They rely on cases holding that confessions which are “promptly and spontaneously” made upon arrest are admissible, even when made prior to arraignment. This . exception to McNabb is a common-sense concession in the case of a willing defendant who wants to “spill” all as soon as the police finally catch up with -him; in such circumstances, the police need not shut his mouth or stuff their own ears with cotton until he can be brought before a magistrate. In such cases,, there is no “opportunity for improper pressure by police”, to induce the confession. U. S. v. Carignan, 72 S.Ct. 102. United States v. Mitchell, 322 U.S. 65, 64 S.Ct. 896, 88 L.Ed. 1140, is the leading case on this point. There the defendant’s, confession was given at the police-station *861before commitment, a feiv minutes after two policemen had jailed him on a charge of housebreaking and larceny. . His confession was complete and /detailed; he even directed the policemen to the loot. Appellate courts have followed suit where confessions were dictated and signed within an hour or so after arrival at police headquarters, Patterson v. United States, 5 Cir., 183 F.2d 687; or where an oral confession (complete in all its details) was made immediately after arrest and merely repeated for stenographing later in the day. Haines v. United States, 9 Cir., 188 F.2d 546.
None of these cases touches Leviton’s. Although there is talk in the Haines opinion about a reasonable opportunity for the police to check stories of arrested persons before arraigning them, in fact, the defendants in both that case and in Mitchell had completely implicated themselves — i. e., beyond extrication — by the time the police began checking their stories. They had made confessions amply sufficient to cinch a verdict of guilt. Levitón, in contrast, dropped one meager remark about “making a dishonest dollar,” a remark which, unlike a confession, could not alone possibly secure a conviction. Leviton’s is not an instance of a confession begun which would have been interrupted by an arraignment. Indeed, after that remark, Levitón said nothing of significance until three hours later when he admitted destroying certain declarations. My colleagues can point to no cases permitting police to delay arraignment so that they may track down clues and leads which the defendant, consciously or unconsciously, may have revealed, but which, of themselves, do not amount to any sort of confession of a specific crime.5 If Levitón had been arraigned even by 5:30, the latest moment when, probably, a magistrate could have been conveniently secured, he might have shut up, leaving the puzzled customs men to speculate exactly how he “had made his dishonest dollar,” and to search vainly through the files to which he had directed them for vital missing declarations.
My colleagues come up with an astonishing argument, not suggested by the government, that “if the agents had been more sophisticated in their approach, and had pressed for it,” Levitón, immediately upon his arrest, would have made a full confession. He showed, my colleagues say, a “sense of guilt” from the beginning, and a desire to “cooperate throughout the period.” Accordingly, so my colleagues argue, we must treat the case exactly as if, in actual fact, he had confessed at or almost immediately after the time of his arrest. Therefore, my colleagues conclude, the actual time that elapsed between his arrest and his confession must be disregarded, and the failure during that time to bring him before a commissioner or judge is irrelevant.
To my mind, this argument is itself “sophisticated” — far too much so. It rests on a non-existent fact, a wholly fictitious “fact,” i. e., a pretense or make-believe that a confession occurred several hours before it actually occurred. If one could in this way fictionally date a confession back for several hours (by pre-dating or nuncpro-tmvcing it) merely because a later actual confession, since it was voluntary, is to be deemed a disclosure of an initial “desire to cooperate,” then the McNabb doctrine would be gutted, since never could it be violated. For that doctrine applies only when the government proves, or the defendant admits, that his confession was *862voluntary, i. e., “cooperative”; and one could always fictionally assume (as my colleagues assume here) that more adroit officers, immediately upon his arrest, could have converted his “cooperativeness” into a confession. This is a dangerous notion. Is an officer’s belief in an accused’s “sense of guilt” to create an exception to Mc-Nabb? If I am not mistaken, this is a technique frequently used in police states to extort confessions: officials play upon an individual’s guilt-proneness by prolonged grilling and humiliating interrogation. It has proved to be an effective device in eliciting confessions — true or false— from certain types of anxious and neurotic persons who will confess their guilt-ridden fantasies under such pressure.6 (It is worth adding that the trial judge here was not altogether convinced of Leviton’s complete “cooperativeness”: The judge ruled that an illegal seizure occurred when the customs men took from Levitón a briefcase, although he apparently offered no resistance and reacted with a nod of the head.)
The McNabb rule is especially vital to the protection of just such indiscreet defendants as Levitón, for another basic reason. Despite my colleagues’ dismissal of McNabb as merely a sanction or penalty for police misconduct in delaying arraignment, a much more compelling policy lies behind it — i e., the prevention, in the most effective way possible, of coerced confessions elicited by the dreaded “third degree.” “For this procedural requirement checks resort to those reprehensible practices known as the ‘third degree’ which, though universally rejected as indefensible, still find their way into use.” McNabb v. United States, 318 U.S. 332, 344, 63 S.Ct. 608, 614, 87 L.Ed. 819, restated in United States v. Mitchell, 322 U.S. 65, 66-67, 64 S.Ct. 896, 88 L.Ed. 1140; 7 Carignan v. United States, 20 L.W. 4013, 4015. Recognizing the difficulty of proving “torture, physical or psychological” and the “relation between illegal incommunicado detention and ‘third-degree’ practices”, United States v. Mitchell, 322 U.S. 65, 68, 64 S.Ct. 896, 897, 88 L.Ed. 1140, the Court chose to minimize the use of coerced confessions by ruling out automatically any such statements obtained during the period and in circumstances when those police officers who are given to such practices normally apply coercion.8
*863The cases in which defendants confess on arrest are outside the prophylactic policy, on this account: An arrested person who promptly confesses has no need to fear strong-armed police methods. But nothing is more conducive to- physical brutality or psychological badgering by so-called “lawless” policeman than a situation in which the defendant, without confessing, mutters something vague about his having been dishonest, or otherwise drops a clue or two. Then undisciplined policemen are most likely to employ “torture, physical or psychological” — to break him down. This kind of susceptible defendant needs Mc-Nabb protection the most.
Since Leviton’s confession, in my opinion, was inadmissible under McNabb, I think that both his conviction and Blumenfeld’s (at least on counts 1-12) should be set aside. There was, my colleagues concede, no “direct proof that he (Blumenfeld) took any part in the physical preparation of these documents or even that he ever saw them.” But the prosecution was allowed to read to the jury the following portion of Leviton’s confession, implicating Blumenfeld:
“Q. Was Blumenfeld aware of the fact that you were using the license of the American Relief for Italy? A. Yes, sir, because he tried to get them first, and that is how he got to me, because he knew I was the traffic manager for Barr and we handled the American Relief for Italy, and I was stupid enough to feel I could make a few easy dollars, which I see is not possible.” This excerpt from the confession was the only direct testimony that Blumenfeld knew about and sanctioned the illegal scheme. It could easily have tu'rned the trick with the jury. Now, the admissions of one defendant implicating another, are theoretically inadmissible, for obvious reasons, against the person implicated. Such accusations are hearsay— and, in the circumstances, probably ill-motivated and peculiarly untrustworthy hearsay. However, where several defendants are tried jointly, such confessions are received when necessary to prove the declarant’s guilt, and a “ritualistic admonition” given to the jury to disregard the contents insofar as they implicate the other defendants. United States v. Lonardo, 2 Cir., 67 F.2d 833; United States v. Gottfried, 2 Cir., 165 F.2d 360, certiorari denied 333 U.S. 860, 68 S.Ct. 738, 92 L.Ed. 1139. But I think that such a rule does not excuse what was done here: The statements about Blumenfeld in the confession added nothing at all to the case against Levitón which was not amply proved by the remainder of his confession.9 The portion relating to Blumenfeld should not have been read to the jury. Blumenfeld’s counsel asked for such exclusion before the reading; since he had time only to skim through the document and was not familiar with its contents, he could not point to the specific answers incriminating Blumenfeld. Apparently the judge misunderstood the nature of the objection as to the admissibility of such portions; at any rate he made it clear that he would not exclude the Blumenfeld matter, agreeing *864only to instruct the jury that such.portions were not binding against Blumenfeld. Blumenfeld’s counsel did not object further to such portions during the reading of the confessions, obviously because he considered his general objection, made before the reading, sufficient. Consequently, I think he cannot be held to have waived his objection.10 Nor do I think that, previous to the reading of the confession, he had to request a severance or forever after hold his peace. For, at the time when, according to my colleagues, he should have asked for severance, he had not had a fair chance to read through the confession to see whether it was so prejudicial as to require a retrial. He had earlier objected to the introduction of the entire confession as a McNabb violation, and (only because the trial judge ruled erroneously in admitting the confession) he was put in the perplexing position of having to choose, without knowledge of the confession’s contents, between continuance and severance.
“It is a hard rule anyway which allows declarations to be used at all in a case where the declarant is tried along with others.” L. Hand, J., in United States v. Lonardo, 2 Cir., 67 F.2d 883, 884. It is a harder rule that would allow declarations which cannot be introduced against the declarant to be introduced against his confederates. That is, in effect, what would happen if Leviton’s conviction were overturned and Blumenfeld’s upheld. Leviton’s confession is incompetent under McNabb'— incompetent against not only confederates but against the declarant himself; incompetent in a much more basic way than mere hearsay. The circumstances of a McNabb confession are somewhat akin, in the Supreme Court’s thinking, to those of a coerced confession to the extent that they make the evidence generally “bad” or “tainted.” I think that, if the trial judge here had ruled correctly, such evidence would never have come in at all. We ought not then to extend the “ritualistic admonition” rule to cover situations where the confession should never have been admitted. To do so would be to penalize a defendant for the trial judge’s error as to a co-defendant. Thus in Anderson v. United States, 318 U.S. 350, 63 S.Ct. 599, 602, 87 L.Ed. 829, the convictions of all co-defendants tried jointly were reversed where the confessions of some implicating the others had been introduced although obtained in violation of the McNabb rule. Although the “ritualistic admonition” had been given at the time of their introduction, the Court found “There is no reason to believe * * * that confessions which came before the jury as an organic tissue of proof can be severed and given distributive' significance by holding that they had a major share in the conviction of some of the petitioners and none at all as to the others. Since it was error to admit the confessions, we see no escape from the conclusion that the convictions of all the petitioners must be set aside.” 11
*865This court has already recognized a distinction between the Anderson type case (like this one) and an ordinary situation where the declarant’s confession is admissible, at least against himself. See United States v. Gottfried, supra, 165 F.2d at page 367, where we pointed out: “In Anderson v. United States, the confession had itself been unlawfully obtained, and was incompetent against the declarant; for that reason its admission resulted in a mistrial of the other accused.”
2. Even if the confession were admissible, I think we should reverse and remand because of events which deprived defendants of a fair trial.12
(a) When the trial judge irrelevantly spoke in defense of American Relief for Italy, and indulged in a bit of what he later feared was “flag-waving,” he did so by way of a rebuke to counsel for one of the defendants. The rebuke, I think, was undeserved. The question that elicited it was patently asked in the interests of the defendants. It is highly likely, then, that when the uncalled-for comment evoked applause from two jurors, those jurors were expressing enthusiastic sympathy with what they considered the judge’s disapproval of the defendants.
Since the judge’s indiscretion may well have induced a verdict against the defendants, it will not do, I think, to say that we will ignore the incident because the judge was only human. Of course, all judges are 'human, and therefore make mistakes. But as the mistake of the judge in this case may easily have harmed the defendants seriously, we should correct it by directing a new trial.13 We should be humane as well as human. And since the defendants are languishing in jail and the trial judge is not, they should be the object of our humaneness.
(b) On the second day of trial, the prosecutor held a “press conference” after court. He told the newspaper reporters of matters which (so he later advised the court) they promised not to print. In the next morning’s New York Times, there appeared a story, told with typical journalistic vigor, about “export racketeers” who “poured $500,000 of commodities into European and South African black markets.” The significance of the newspaper story was this: It professed to recount the testimony of a witness that Levitón, over the phone, had offered him a $200 bribe to withdraw from customs files a fraudulent declaration. The article detailed the attempted bribe, the meeting place for its completion and the substitution of a $44 gift of shirts for the originally-offered $200. This most damaging story of the $200 bribe is wholly unsupported by the evidence. Accordingly, had the prosecutor written letters to the jurors retelling this story, of course we would reverse. He did the equivalent. For it is outrightly conceded that the Times reporter learned this tale from the prosecutor, and that four copies of the newspaper article were found in the jury-room on the third day of the trial.
My colleagues admit that “trial by newspaper” is unfortunate. But they dismiss it as an unavoidable curse of metropolitan living (like, I suppose, crowded subways). They rely on the old “ritualistic admonition” to purge the record. The futility of that sort of exorcism is notorious. As I have elsewhere observed, it is like the Mark Twain story of the little boy who was told to stand in a corner and not to think of a white elephant.14 Justice Jack*866son, in his concurring opinion in Krulewitch v. United States, 336 U.S. 440, 453, 69 S.Ct. 716, 723, 93 L.Ed. 790, said that, “The - naive assumption that prejudicial effects can be overcome by instructions to the jury * * * all practicing lawyers know to be unmitigated fiction. See Skidmore v. Baltimore & Ohio R. Co., 2 Cir., 167 F.2d 54.” Cf. People v. Carborano, 301 N.Y. 39, 42-43, 92 N.E.2d 871; People v. Robinson, 273 N.Y. 438, 445-446, 8 N.E. 2d 25.
I think the technique particularly objectionable and ineffective here for two reasons. (1) The story was a direct result of confidential disclosures by a government officer, the prosecutor, of not-in-the-record matters, and was not merely the accidental garbling of a confused reporter.15 (2) The article was no statement of opinion or editorial, but a professed account of courtroom evidence calculated to confuse and mislead juror-readers. In such cases, courts recognize that, for all practical purposes, defendants are deprived of their constitutional rights to confront witnesses, cross-examine and contradict them, and to object to evidence as irrelevant or incompetent — in short all the elements of a fair trial. Last year, two Supreme Court Justices advocated in a concurring opinion the reversal of a conviction upon the ground that an officer of the court had released to the local press information about confessions of the defendants never introduced at the trial. Shepherd v. Florida, 341 U.S. 50, 71 S.Ct. 549, 95 L.Ed. 740.16
I cannot see the relevance here of cases, to which my colleagues refer, applying the “clear and present danger” test to con-tempts by newspapers for articles relative to pending trials (incidentally, all non-jury trials). That test has been employed only when the newspaper itself was threatened with criminal punishment for the publication. It certainly should not be carried over to a case like this one where convicted defendants may well have been prejudiced by a newspaper article. In such a case, the “clear and present danger” test would bar reversals for all but the most flagrantly scurrilous or deceptive newspaper attacks. Courts, in reversing convictions for trial-by-newspaper, have always recognized that printed matter may be prejudicial enough to require a new trial without evidencing so depraved an attitude of the publisher as to support a contempt citation. United States v. Ogden, D.C.E.D. Pa., 105 F. 371, 374.17
In the instant case, the newspaper and reporter, if cited for contempt, would doubtless urge as a defense that the story came from the prosecutor, an “officer of the court.” That very fact, however, underscores the gravity of the error here.
(c) I think that nothing said by defendants’ counsel could justify the prosecutor’s *867statement to the jury — not supported by anything in the record — that Levitón had refused to testify before the grand jury. The statement was so perceptibly objectionable that it did not have to be called to the judge’s attention. Moreover, the prosecutor, before and after this remark, told the jury of other matters not in evidence (including some of the circumstances of the alleged $200 bribe mentioned in the newspaper).
On account of item (a) or (b) or (c), standing alone, I would probably have voted for reversal. Together they leave me without doubt that justice demands a new trial.

. McNabb v. United States, 338 U.S. 332, 63 S.Ct. 608, 87 L.Ed. 819; United States v. Mitchell, 322 U.S. 65, 64 S.Ct. 896, 88 L.Ed. 1140; Upshaw v. United *858States, 335 U.S. 410, 69 S.Ct. 170, 93 L.Ed. 100; United States v. Carignan, 72 S.Ct. 97.

. In the Carignan case, the accused was duly arraigned and imprisoned on a charge of assault. During questioning by the police after arraignment he confessed to an entirely different crime-murder. The Court held that the confession was not inadmissible under the McNabb rule in a subsequent trial for the murder because the accused had received the benefit of the commissioner’s statement on his arraignment for assault, and his detention was therefore entirely legal. But see Black, J., Frankfurter, J., and Douglas, J., concurring.

. Time table of length of detentions held reasonable because of unavailability of arraigning officer:
Case Time Arrest Confession
Walker v. U. S., 2 Cir., 176 F.2d 564, cert. den. 338 U. S. 891, 70 S.Ct. 239. Sunday, Aug. 31 Sometime before arraignment on Tuesday, Sept. 2
U. S. v. Keegan, 2 Cir., 141 F.2d 248, rev’d on other grounds Keegan v. U. S., 325 U.S. 478, 65 S.Ct. 1203. Saturday, July 4 Monday, July 6
Garner v. U. S., 84 U.S.App. D.C., 361, 174 F.2d 499, cert. den. 337 U.S. 945, 69 S.Ct. 1502. 9 :00 P. M. 10:30 P. M. 10:30 P. M. 2:30 A. M.
Symons v. U. S., 9 Cir., 178 F.2d 615, cert. den. 339 U.S. 985, 70 S.Ct. 1006. 1:00 A. M. 8:00 A. M.

. A Memorandum on the Detention of Arrested Persons in a Statement by the Committee on the Bill of Rights of the A. B. A. on H. R. 3600 (1943) 30. “The new words (in Rule 5a) recognize that delay is inevitably caused by the journey to the commissioner’s office and by the fact that the Commissioner does not sleep there.” “Our previous discussion has shown the novelty in our law of any plan which bases the length of detention on the need for interrogation or any other purpose except insuring the appearance of the prisoner to ' answer the duly authenticated charge of a specific crime. * * * Detention overnight till the magistrate reaches his office seems as much as any possibly innocent citizen ought to undergo, without having access to his lawyer and a judicial determination of tbe propriety of his confinement.” “We have found no indication that there was ever any law in the United States or England authorizing a person to be detained for the purpose of facilitating investigation.” Ibid, at 29, 31, 12. Dession, New Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, 55 Yale. L.J. 694, 713 (1946): “But, obviously, the question is whether the duty of arraignment ‘without unnecessary delay’ permits an arresting officer only such time as may be needed to bring the offender before the nearest available magistrate, or whether, in . addition, it permits a certain amount of time for interrogation and investigation. The decisions of the Court, beginning with the McNabb case, clearly suggest the former interpretation.”

. Time table of admissible spontaneous confessions obtained before arraignment:
Case Period between Arrest and Confession Extent of Confession
U. S. v. Mitchell, 322 U.S. 65, 64 S.Ct. 896. Pew minutes after arrival at police station Complete oral confession
Haines v. U. S., 9 Cir., 188 F.2d 546. Immediately on arrival at federal building Oral confession complete in all details
Patterson v. U. S., 5 Cir., 183 F.2d 691. 30 minutes (government’s version) — 2 hrs. after arrest (defendant’s version) Signed complete written confession

. Redlich, Ravitz, and Dession, Narcoanalysis and Truth, 107 Am.J. Psychiatry, No. 8, Feb. 1951, conclude on the basis of experiments with drug-induced confessions that certain neurotic individuals with strong feelings of guilt, depression, and anxiety confess most easily, and that such confessions can be as easily obtained without as with the use of drugs. “Open and veiled threats” and “the feeling of inevitable doom” facilitate the development of a reactive depression in’ any person, but particularly in those with self-punitive tendencies and depressive moods. Such people will confess to false and true fantasies leading to punishment; false and fantastic self-accusations are a part of the depression into which they are thrown by their stimulated fears. The authors explain, on this theory, many of the public trial confessions in totalitarian regimes, and recount examples of false confessions elicited from weak persons near the breaking point without the use of “hard methods” but merely by playing upon their guilt-ridden personalities.

' «* * * Jq Cases coming from the stato courts in matters of this sort, we are concerned solely with determining whether a confession is the result of torture, physical or psychological, and not the offspring of reasoned choice. How difficult and often elusive an inquiry this implies, our decisions make manifest. And for the important relation between * * * incommunicado detention and ‘third-degree’ practices, see (citations). But under the duty of formulating rules of evidence for federal prosecutions, we are not confined to the constitutional question of ascertaining when a confession comes of a free choice and when it is extorted by force, however subtly applied.” United States v. Mitchell, 322 U.S. 65, 68, 64 S.Ct. 896, 897, 88 L.Ed. 1140.

. Dession, supra, at 710. “The court had apparently come to the conclusion that the only way to eliminate third degree abuses * * * was to insist that there be no incommunicado detention even for a day or two, and even though those detained may be well treated in any case.” A. B. A. Committee, *863supra, at 15, 17. “Still, it is obvious that the line between proper and improper questioning may easily be passed. Nothing but the conscience of the officers protects a prisoner from milder or drastic forms of the third degree so long as he is in their uncontrolled custody, removed from systematic prison regulations and isolated from the outside world. * * * The danger period, when the third degree is ordinarily administered, begins with arrest and ends when the police bring the prisoner before a magistrate. * * * Coercion itself is always hard to prove because the questioning takes place in secret; but excessive length of confinement is an objective fact which judges can easily discover and penalize.”

. Compare Leviton’s answer to Q. 58 with earlier and later answers.
“Q. 38: Was theire anything wrong with these, declarations? A. The only thing wrong was that I used somebody else’s license with (sic) their permission, and I knew you shouldn’t do it.”
“Q. 116: Didn’t you know that' the original declarations then would be on file at the customs house and you might be called upon to explain those declarations being missing? A. I did know that, sir. But I just destroyed them, like sticking your head in the sand. You know you have done something wrong. So I did it.”

. “Mr. Kove (Blumenfeld’s counsel): For the record, if your Honor please, I am not accurately familiar with the contents of the alleged questions and answers. I had a very, very brief opportunity to just run through the pages. They are numerous. I don’t know at this time to what extent they are prejudicial to the defendant Blumenfeld, but in so far as the record is concerned at this point, I should like to object to the admission of any questions and answers involving the defendant Blumenfeld upon the grounds, of course,' that any statement in those answers would not be binding upon him.
“The Court: That objection is sustained. I thought I covered that when I said I will instruct the jury as to that. Now, to make my position more clear as to counsel for both Blumenfeld and Markowitz, beyond making this ruling in the absence of the jury and instructing the jury with all emphasis at my command that they are to confine their consideration of this confession as against the defendant Levitón in this trial in which there are three defendants, I can do nothing further. That is what I say even to the defendant Blumenfeld: that I place you upon your own advice as to whether you choose to continue in this under the circumstances.
“Mr. Kove: On that score, you Honor, I would have to wait and hear what comes in. I.don’t know.”
(Emphasis added.)

. In the Anderson case, to be sure, the trial judge omitted to recaution the *865jurors in his charge to consider the confessions binding against the declarants only. But see U. S. v. Haupt, 7 Cir., 136 F.2d 661, where the court reversed convictions based primarily on confederates’ confessions despite limiting instructions by the trial judge both at the time of admission and in the charge.

. It should be noted, however, that only the applause-evoking incident would seem to affect the conviction of Markowitz.

. See McKahan v. Baltimore & Ohio R. Co., 223 Pa. 1, 72 A. 251, where a judgment against a railroad for negligence was reversed because an improper remark by the judge, to the effect that the railroad ought to have put a guard near the tracks, elicited applause from a single juror.

. United States v. Antonelli Fireworks Co., 2 Cir., 155 F.2d 631, 656 (dissenting opinion)i

. “Mr. McAuley: These gentlemen (reporters) asked me to summarize the testimony, and I did, and they asked me how Levitón came to go to the restaurant in the first instance, at the St. James Bar, and I told them under no circumstances whatever — and I enjoined them very seriously — was any mention to be made of the reason why according to the witness he may have went up to the restaurant. I pressed that upon them three times. I think this man will bear me out.”
Even the most ardent advocates of freedom of the press to report and comment on trials, stress the need for curbs on press releases during trial by attorneys on either side. See Note, 59 Yale L.J. 534, 545; Robbins, The Hauptmann Trial in the Light of English Criminal Procedure, 21 A B. A. Journal 301 (1935).

. “It is bard to imagine a more prejudicial influence than a press release by the officer of the court charged with defendants’ custody stating that they had confessed, and here just such a statement, unsworn to, unseen, uncross-examined and uncontradicted, was conveyed by the press to the jury.” Shepherd v. Florida, 341 U.S. 50, 52, 71 S.Ct. 549, 550, 95 L.Ed. 740.

. Compare United States v. Keegan, 2 Cir., 141 F.2d 248, 258, cited by my colleagues, in which we refused to reverse a conviction because of a newspaper headline, “Bund Leaders Toss in Sponge at Draft Trial.” In that ease, there was no evidence that any juror had read the article, and the headline was obviously an editorial conclusion, not a comment on particular evidence or an account of purported evidence given in the trial.