Court Opinion

ID: 9420881
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:56:15.132611+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:27.467987
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Black,
with whom Mr. Justice Douglas concurs, dissenting.
The Fifth Amendment declares that no person “shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” The Court nevertheless here sustains an Act which requires a man to register and confess that he is engaged in the business of gambling. I think this confession can provide a basis to convict him of a federal crime for having gambled before registration without paying a federal tax. 26 U. S. C. (Supp. V) §§ 3285, 3290, 3291, 3294. Whether or not the Act has this effect, I am sure that it creates a squeezing device contrived to put a man in federal prison if he refuses to confess himself into a state prison as a violator of state gambling *37laws.* The coercion of confessions is a common but justly criticized practice of many countries that do not have or live up to a Bill of Rights. But we have a Bill of Rights that condemns coerced confessions, however refined or legalistic may be the technique of extortion. I would hold that this Act violates the Fifth Amendment. See my dissent in Feldman v. United States, 322 U. S. 487, 494-503.

In Pennsylvania, where this defendant is accused of having gambled, such conduct is a crime punishable by “separate or solitary” imprisonment. Purdon’s Pa. Stat. Ann., 1945, Tit. 18, §§ 4601, 4602, 4603.