Court Opinion

ID: 9452491
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:42:08.153669+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:14.108617
License: Public Domain

CHAMBERS, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
I concur in the majority opinion, holding that denial of leave to proceed in forma pauperis was error. Appellant alleges in his unartfully drawn documents that he was “forced” to make a confession and that his confession was “involuntary.” While these statements are only conclusions, appellant should be given the chance to amend to state a good cause of action if he can do so. Pem-brook v. Wilson, 9th Cir. 1966, 370 F.2d 37.
To state a good cause of action, however, appellant must state facts that, if true, would constitute coercion. Supreme Court decisions indicate that one test in determining whether a confession has been coerced is to ask if the accused’s will was “overborne” at the time he confessed, Leyra v. Denno, 347 U.S. 556, 74 S.Ct. 716, 98 L.Ed. 948 (1954). As discussed in my dissent in Sessions v. Wilson, No. 20,861, 9th Cir. 1966, 372 F.2d 366, circumstances pointing to coercion include questioning a suspect while he is irrational, ill, injured or under the influence of drugs, as well as making threats of retribution against himself or his family or subjecting him to marathon periods of questioning. I disapprove of the trend I sense here and there to go beyond the Supreme Court and to equate coercion with unpleasantness. In cases where the rules set down in Escobedo v. State of Illinois, 378 U.S. 478, 84 S.Ct. 1758, 12 L.Ed.2d 977 (1964), and Miranda v. State of Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966), were not anticipated and met, we are generally going to find that a suspect was questioned for some period of time. If we start saying that a couple of hours of questioning constitutes coercion, we not only go beyond the Supreme Court, but we in practical effect go far toward making those cases retroactive.