Court Opinion

ID: 9641461
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:32:40.030088+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:37.623820
License: Public Domain

EDGERTON, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
The chief question is whether the court erred in admitting confessions made while appellants were held by the police, after arrest on suspicion without warrants and before commitment.
A police sergeant testified, and the government concedes, that George Garner’s arrest took place at his home at 7:35 or 7:40 p. m. I understand this to mean he was taken into custody then. I know of no evidence to the contrary. George was taken to police headquarters between 9 and 9:45 p. m. He made an oral confession about 10:30 p. m. and signed a written one about 2:15 a. m. Lawrence Garner was arrested at his home at 10:30 p. m. and taken to police headquarters at 11 p. m. He admitted knowledge of the crime about 2:30 a. m. and signed a confession at 5:30 a. m. Both appellants had been questioned continuously, sometimes in the presence of many officers. Both were young Negro men of limited education. George was, at best, of limited mental capacity and emotional stability. The appellants were not taken before a committing magistrate until about 10 a. m.
There was some evidence that the police used force. Officers admitted that George Gamer “finally began to cry” and that Lawrence Garner had blood on his head. Á physician who examined the appellants in jail a day later found an abrasion and a number of contusions on Lawrence. The police denied using force. The court admitted the confessions in evidence and submitted to the jury the question whether they were “voluntary.”
I think the recent Upshaw case shows that these confessions should have been excluded. The Supreme Court said: “In the McNabb case we held that confessions had been improperly admitted where they were the plain result of holding and interrogating persons without carrying them ‘forthwith’ before a committing magistrate as the law commands. * * * We held that the plain purpose of the requirement that prisoners should promptly be taken before committing mag strates was to check resort by officers to ‘secret interrogation of persons accused of crime.’9 * * The McNabbs were not promptly taken before a judicial officer as the law required, but instead were held for secret questioning, and ‘[this questioning] took place while they were in the custody of the arresting officers and before any commitment was made.’ The McNabb confessions were thus held inadmissible because the McNabbs were questioned while held in ‘plain disregard of the duty enjoined by Congress upon Federal officers’ promptly to take them before a judicial officer. * * * The Mitchell case * * reaffirms the McNabb rule that a confession is inadmissible if made during illegal detention due to failure promptly to carry a prisoner before a committing magistrate, whether or not the ‘confession is the result of torture, physical or psychological *504* * * * * * We adhere to that rule.”10
The Upshaw decision was based on Rule 5(a) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, which requires arresting officers to “take the arrested person without unnecessary delay before the nearest available commissioner or before any other nearby officer empowered to commit persons charged with offenses against the laws of the United States.” The Rule and its plain purpose of checking secret interrogation were violated here. The court argues that because the Garners were arrested after office hours the delay in taking them before a magistrate was not illegal. I disagree. Upshaw was arrested at 2 a. m.11 and the Supreme Court does not suggest that the failure of the police to take him before a magistrate did not become illegal until morning.12 The government says committing magistrates “maintain availability for judicial .busi-, ness” only between 9 a.m. and 4 p. m. on week days and between 9 a. m. and noon on Saturdays. To the contrary, we said more than two years ago “both by law and practice * * * application for hearing might have been made to any of these committing magistrates at any hour.”13 Unless at least one magistrate is always available, secret interrogation cannot be prevented.
There is no evidence that a committing magistrate was not in fact available, or that delay was necessary for any other reason. There is no evidence and no contention that the police attempted to take the appellants promptly before a committing magistrate. It is plain here as in the Upshaw case that they preferred to keep their prisoners for secret interrogation. Police officers testified they told George Garner “to come along with us to Headquarters; we wanted to talk to him further” and told Lawrence Garner “we want to [take] you down to police headquarters and talk with you.”
These confessions should also have been excluded for a more fundamental reason. In Haley v. Ohio a confession had been obtained, as these confessions were, during a secret interrogation which lasted several hours and in which several policemen took part. The defendant was a Negro boy of IS. The Supreme Court reversed his conviction. Four Justices said: “The trial court, after a preliminary hearing on the voluntary character of the confession, allowed it to be admitted in evidence over petitioner’s objection * * *. The court instructed the jury to disregard the confession if it found that he did not make the confession voluntarily and of his free will. But the ruling of the trial court and the finding of the jury on the voluntary character of the confession do not foreclose the independent examination which it is our duty to make here. * * * The Fourteenth Amendment prohibits police from using the private, secret custody of either man or child as a device for wringing confessions from them.”14 The due process clause of the Fifth Amendment prohibits this in the District of Columbia.

 “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.” McNabb v. United States, 338 U.S. 332, 344, 63 S.Ct. 608, 87 L.Ed. 819.
The dissenting Justices in the Up-shaw case conceded “that a prompt hearing gives an accused an opportunity to obtain a lawyer; to secure from him advice as to maintaining an absolute silence to all questions, no matter how apparently innocuous; to gain complete freedom from police interrogation in all bailable offenses; and that these privileges are more valuable to the illiterate and inexperienced than to the educated and well-briefed accused.” 335 U.S. 410, 424.

 Upshaw v. United States, 385 U.S. 410, 69 S.Ct. 170, reversing 83 U.S.App. D.C. 207, 168 F.2d 167.
The Garners were tried during the interval between the decisions of this court and of the Supreme Court in the Upshaw case.

 He had been held 30 hours when he confessed.

 The opinion of the Court does not even mention the time of his arrest. The dissenting opinion mentions it in footnote 25, in the course of a detailed statement of the facts, but makes no other reference to it

 Akowskey v. United States, 81 U.S. App.D.C. 353, 354, 158 F.2d 649, 650.

 Mr. Justice, Douglas in Haley v. State of Ohio, 332 U.S. 596, 599, 601, 68 S.Ct. 302, 303. Three other Justices concurred in his opinion. In a separate opinion, Mr. Justice Frankfurter concurred in reversing Haley’s conviction as a denial of due process. He said, 332 U. S. at pages 608-607, 68 S.Ot. 302, at page 307: “Of course, the police meant to exercise pressures upon Haley to make him talk. That was the very purpose of their procedure.”