Court Opinion

ID: 9447601
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 22:38:36.021062+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:06.428632
License: Public Domain

WASHINGTON, Circuit Judge.
I concur in the result, and in most of what Judge BURGER has said. But I cannot agree that the accused is merely “an incidental and always an undeserving beneficiary” of the McNabb-Mallory doctrine. The accused is presumed to be an innocent man until the Government proves him guilty. Very frequently a person under interrogation by the police is in fact innocent. In Mallory, for example, at least three suspects were examined at great length by the police. See 1957, 354 U.S. 449, at pages 450-451, 77 S.Ct. 1356, at page 1357, 1 L.Ed.2d 1479. It is common knowledge that many times the police have voluntarily released a man even after he has confessed, on the ground that the confession was a fabrication. Rule 5 protects the individual as well as society: it helps suppress untruth as well as truth. It may not create “constitutional rights,” but it creates valuable protections for the individual. The decision in Walder cuts across these protections, and I agree that it controls the present case. But Walder must be applied with care, so that Rule 5 and the McNabb-Mallory doctrine will not lose their force and meaning.