Court Opinion

ID: 9449620
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:17:22.154838+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:54.905597
License: Public Domain

J. SKELLY WRIGHT, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
In McNabb v. United States, 318 U.S. 332, 343-344, 63 S.Ct. 608, 614, 87 L.Ed. 819 (1943), the Supreme Court, in applying former 18 U.S.C. § 595, the predecessor statute to Rule 5(a), F.R.Crim.P.,1 stated:
“The purpose of this impressively pervasive requirement of criminal procedure is plain. * * * 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. It aims to avoid all the evil implications of secret interrogation of persons accused of crime. It reflects not a sentimental but a sturdy view of law enforcement. It outlaws easy but self-defeating ways in which brutality is substituted for brains as an instrument of crime detection. A statute carrying such purposes is expressive of a general legislative policy to which courts should not be heedless when appropriate situations call for its application.”
The McNabb opinion closed with the observation that “[t]he history of liberty has largely been the history of observance of procedural safeguards. And the effective administration of criminal justice hardly requires disregard of fair procedures imposed by law.” 318 U.S. at 347, 63 S.Ct. at 616, 87 L.Ed. 819.
This routine criminal case, coming some twenty years after the decision in McNabb, demonstrates not only the continuing validity of the McNabb-Mallory 2 doctrine, but also the fact that its prophylactic command continues to be disregarded. The appellant here maintains that the police invaded his home without a warrant and without his permission, searched his bedroom, and subjected him to extensive, but fruitless, questioning there before taking him down to police headquarters and coercing him to confess through the administration of physical brutality. The police deny these allegations while admitting that they did indeed go to appellant’s home to question him about a safe robbery. There, according to the police, they were invited to his bedroom where they discovered incriminating evidence in open view. The police further state that, after some questioning in which the appellant refused to admit his participation in any crime, they arrested him and took him to the “Safe Squad Office”3 at police headquarters where he readily and voluntarily made a full confession in ten minutes.
Thus we have presented a situation which McNabb, Upshaw,4 Mallory, and their progeny were intended to avoid: allegations of police brutality in abstract*993ing a confession before the person arrested comes under the protection of the committing magistrate, and a denial of the brutality by the police. Congress and the courts have realized that the testimony of a lone defendant under these circumstances is ordinarily no match for testimony from several police officers who could not, of course, be expected to admit brutality in any event, since one who would be guilty of such conduct would find little difficulty in denying it under oath.5 On the other hand, Congress and the courts have also recognized that many of the claims of police brutality have little substance, but, nevertheless, are sometimes given credence when arrested persons are unduly delayed in police custody before being transferred to judicial custody. These twin evils Rule 5(a) was designed to eliminate.
Mallory, in declaring an uncoerced confession obtained in violation of Rule 5(a) inadmissible in evidence, stated that an arrested person “is not to be taken to police headquarters in order to carry out a process of inquiry that lends itself, even if not so designed, to eliciting damaging statements to support the arrest and ultimately his guilt.” 354 U.S. at 454, 77 S.Ct. at 1359, 1 L.Ed.2d 1479. Here, instead of being taken to the nearest commissioner without unnecessary delay as required by Rule 5(a), appellant was taken to the Safe Squad Office at police headquarters “in order to carry out a process of inquiry” which resulted in a confession. That the police were able to obtain the confession quickly, once the defendant was in the Safe Squad Office, does not make the violation of his rights less objectionable or the confession more reliable.
The important fact is that the police delayed until appellant confessed, and then brought him before the commissioner.
I respectfully dissent.

. Rule 5(a), in pertinent part, provides: “An officer making an arrest * * * shall take the arrested person without unnecessary delay before the nearest available commissioner * *

. Mallory v. United States, 354 U.S. 449, 77 S.Ct. 1356, 1 L.Ed.2d 1479 (1957).

. It appears that the “Safe Squad Office” is one of several rooms at police headquarters similar to the “Homicide Squad Office,” the “Vice Squad Office,” and the “Stolen Vehicle Office,” where investigation and interrogation with respect to particular crimes are conducted by officers experienced in these specialties.

. Upshaw v. United States, 335 U.S. 410, 69 S.Ct. 170, 93 L.Ed. 100 (1948).

. See Hogan and Snee, The McNabb-Mallory Rule: Its Rise, Rationale and Rescue, 47 Geo. L.J. 1, 27 (1958).