Court Opinion

ID: 9422546
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:03:12.680533+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:31.828494
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Goldberg,
concurring.
I join in the opinion and judgment of the Court and add a few words by way of comment on the dissenting opinion of my Brother Stewart.
*323I cannot agree with Mr. Justice Stewart that the instructions given to the jury by the trial judge on the issue of credibility indicate the application of a proper constitutional test to measure the voluntariness — and hence the admissibility — of the petitioner’s disputed confession of the Boone murder. In my view, the very portions of the instructions excerpted by my Brother Stewart support, if anything, the contrary conclusion that an improper and constitutionally impermissible standard was utilized by the trial judge himself in the suppression hearing.
If, as suggested by my Brother Stewart, these instructions are taken to evidence the exclusionary standard applied by the trial judge in ruling on the petitioner’s motion to suppress, they reflect error of constitutional dimension, as does the standard of admissibility contained in the affirming opinion of the Illinois Supreme Court. While the appellate court, as pointed out in the opinion of The Chief Justice, see ante. pp. 319-321, appears to have adopted a test of “coherency” to measure the admissibility of the confession, the trial court seemingly concluded that inducement of amnesia was a prerequisite to disregard of the confession. Both standards, whether or not intended to incorporate similar elements, fail to conform to the requisite test.
The third paragraph of the instructions quoted by my Brother Stewart in footnote 2, post, p. 330, advises the jury that it might discount the confession if it found that administration of the drug caused the petitioner to “lose his memory,” to suffer “a state of amnesia” during the period of questioning, and to be unable “to control his answers or to assert his will by denying the crime charged.” By use of the conjunctive to incorporate the requirement of loss of control, this instruction indicates the trial court’s apparent view that if the drug had the effect of overbearing the petitioner’s will but did not also cause loss of *324memory, the confession would nonetheless remain acceptable evidence of guilt. This conclusion is buttressed by the instruction quoted in the concluding paragraph of note 2 in my Brother Stewart's dissenting opinion, in which the trial court indicates that the confession might be disregarded by the jury not simply if the drug had the effect asserted by the petitioner’s expert in response to a hypothetical question, but only if, in addition, the drug so affected the petitioner’s consciousness that “he did not know what he was doing.” The petitioner may have been fully aware of what he was doing in confessing and may have suffered no loss of memory, but that is not the issue. The crucial question, and the measure of evidentiary propriety under the Constitution, is whether the drug— whatever label was or was not affixed to it — so overbore the petitioner’s will that he was unable to resist confessing. Whether or not he was conscious of what he was doing, the petitioner could, because of the drug, have been wholly unable to stop himself from admitting guilt.*
In the absence of contrary indications, I think we must recognize that the misconception of the constitutional standard evidenced by these instructions may well have infected the trial judge’s ruling at the suppression hearing. The inference of error is not negatived by the remainder of the instructions, which permit disregard of the confession if induced by force, physical or mental, duress, or promise of reward. In the context of the instructions as a whole, these references to “voluntariness” do not meet the problems raised by the administration of the drug to the petitioner and do not vitiate the crucial inference that *325the trial judge viewed exclusion as dependent upon the presence of facts in addition to a drug-induced sterilization of the petitioner’s will.
For the reasons contained in the opinion of the Court, and on the basis of what I believe to be the wholly fair inference that the trial court misconceived the proper constitutional measure of admissibility of the petitioner’s confession, the lack of any indication that the trial court did utilize the correct test, and the state appellate court’s apparent application of a similarly erroneous standard, I agree that a hearing must be held below.
Finally, the Court’s opinion does not warrant my Brother Stewart’s criticism as to the propriety or wisdom of articulating standards to govern the grant of eviden-tiary hearings in habeas corpus proceedings. The setting of certain standards is essential to disposition of this case and a definition of their scope and application is an appropriate exercise of this Court’s adjudicatory obligations. Particularly when, as here, the Court is directing the federal judiciary as to its role in applying the historic remedy in a difficult and sensitive area involving large issues of federalism, the careful discharge of our function counsels that, “in order to preclude individualized enforcement of the Constitution in different parts of the Nation, [we] . . . lay down as specifically as the nature of the problem permits the standards or directions that should govern the District Judges in the disposition of applications for habeas corpus by prisoners under sentence of State courts.” Brown v. Allen, 344 U. S. 443, 501-502 (separate opinion of Mr. Justice Frankfurter).

The petitioner’s initial resistance to admitting guilt, his sudden change in attitude, and the veritable flood of confessions succeeding immediately upon administration of the drug to him, see ante, pp. 306-307, all indicate the real possibility that his will was so overborne. Moreover, the reliability of a number of these confessions is seriously impaired. See ibid.