Court Opinion

ID: 9450376
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:44:00.047014+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:16.381098
License: Public Domain

EDGERTON, Senior Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
When Proctor was booked and searched in the police station at 10:55 p. m. on Saturday, the police discovered a card with his real name on it and he spontaneously confessed. He said in substance “I’m the guy that you’re looking for who hit that woman up on 16th Sti'eet.” This confession was not written down.
Instead of being taken to a magistrate-immediately after he had been booked and had confessed, Proctor was taken upstairs to the “Detective’s room”, where-for 50 minutes one officer filled out various forms and another officer obtained and typed a second confession.1 This, written confession was introduced in evidence.2 Proctor was fingerprinted, photographed, and locked up until the-following morning, Sunday, when he was placed in a line-up. He was not presented to the Commissioner until Monday morning.
After an arrest the “next step in the proceeding is to arraign the arrested person before a judicial officer as quickly as possible so that he may be advised of his rights and so that the issue of probable cause may be promptly determined. The arrested person may, of *537•course, be ‘booked’ by the police. But he 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.” Mallory v. United States, 354 U.S. 449, 454, 77 S.Ct. 1356, 1359, 1 L.Ed.2d 1479 (1957). A “confession is inadmissible if made during illegal detention due to failure promptly to carry a prisoner before a committing magistrate.” Upshaw v. United States, 335 U.S. 410, 413, 69 S.Ct. 170, 172, 93 L.Ed. 100 (1948). In my opinion Proctor’s written confession was made during unnecessary delay and should have been excluded. Cf. Spriggs v. United States, 118 U.S.App.D.C. -, 335 F.2d 283, 1964.

. When Boyd said “the whole procedure might have taken ten or fifteen minutes”, I think he was not referring, as the court suggests, to “the processing of the defendant * * * while the statement was also being taken from him”, but to the time between his oral confession at “booking” and the T)eginning of the confession that was later obtained and reduced to writing. His words “ten or fifteen minutes” were used in the following context. “Q How long after the incident that you just described which took place at the booking desk was this statement taken down in typewritten form? A Well, as soon as we got up to the Detective Office and got out to [sic] these forms and carbon paper and sat down at the typewriter and began the procedure which might have been ten or fifteen minutes.”
Boyd testified that Proctor was booked at 10:55 p. m. and then taken to the detectives’ room. Boyd was asked: “Now, approximately how long did you stay in this room?” He answered: “Approximately fifty, fifty-five minutes.” He said “the statement was completed, I believe, at * * * 11:50.” It is undisputed that Proctor had confessed orally at about 10:55 while he was being booked. The written statement was completed and time-stamped at 11:50.

. It does not purport to be a record of the earlier oral confession. It begins: “You are requested to make a statement relative to the robbery and assault that occurred at about 12:30 A.M. Friday, May 17, 1963 * * * ”