Court Opinion

ID: 9421844
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:00:08.442734+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:32.784546
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Stewart,
whom Mr. . Justice Douglas and Mr. Justice Brennan join, concurring.
While I concur in the opinion of the Court, it is. my view that the absence of counsel when this confession was elicited was alone enough to render it inadmissible under the Fourteenth Amendment. '
*327Let it be emphasized at the outset that this is not a ease where the police were questioning a suspect in the course of investigating an unsolved crime. See Crooker v. California, 357 U. S. 433; Cicenia v. Lagay, 357 U. S. 504. When the petitioner surrendered to the New York authorities he was. under indictment for first degree murder.
Under our system of justice an indictment is supposed to be followed by an. arraignment and a trial. At every stage in those proceedings the accused has an absolute right to a lawyer’s help if the case is one in which a death sentence may be imposed. Powell v. Alabama, 287 U. S. 45. Indeed the right to the assistance of counsel whom the accused has himself retained is absolute, whatever the offense for which he is on trial. Chandler v. Fretag, 348 U. S. 3.
' What followed the petitioner’s surrender in this case was not arraignment in a court of law, but an all-night inquisition in a prosecutor’s office, a police station, and an automobile. Throughout the night the petitioner repeatedly asked to be allowed to send for his lawyer, and his requests were repeatedly denied. He finally was induced to make a confession. That confession was used to secure a verdict sending him to the electric chair.
Our-Constitution guarantees the assistance of counsel to a man on trial for his life in-an orderly courtroom, presided over by a judge, open to the public, and protected by all the:procedural safeguards of the law. Surely a Constitution which promises that much can vouchsafe no less to the same man under midnight inquisition in the squad room of a police station.