Court Opinion

ID: 9420631
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:55:28.083774+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:26.319523
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Douglas,
with whom Mr. Justice Black and Mb.' Justice Feankfubtee join, concurring.
I agree that the judgment of conviction was properly set aside. But my reason strikes deeper than the one on which..the. Court résts its .opinion. There are timehonoiod police methods for obtaining confessions from an *46accused. One is detention without arraignment, the problem we dealt with in McNabb v. United States, 318 U. S. 332. Then the accused is under the exclusive control of the police, subject to their mercy, and beyond the reach of counsel or of friends. What happens behind doors that are opened and closed at the sole discretion of the police is a black chapter in every country — the free as well as the despotic, the modern as well as the ancient. In the McNabb case we tried to rid the federal system of those breeding grounds for coerced confessions.
Another time-honored police method for obtaining confessions is to arrest a man on one charge (often a minor one) and use his detention for investigating a wholly different crime. This is an easy short cut for the police. How convenient it is to make detention the vehicle of investigation! Then the police can have access to the prisoner day and night. Arraignment for one crime gives some protection. But when it is a pretense or used as the device for breaking the will of the prisoner on long, relentless, or repeated questionings, it is abhorrent. We should free the federal system of that disreputable practice which has honeycombed the municipal police system in this country.* We should make illegal such a perversion of a “legal” detention.
The rule I propose would, of course, reduce the “efficiency” of the police. But so do the requirements for arraignment, the prohibition against coerced confessions, the right to bail, the jury trial, and most of our other procedural safeguards. We in this country, however early made the choice — that the dignity and privacy o: the individual were worth more to society than an all-powerful police. ■ • ,
*47We are framing 'here a rule of evidence for .criminal trials in the federal courts. That rule must be drawn in light not of the facts of the particular case but of the system which the particular case reflects. Hence, the fact that the charge on which this respondent was arraigned was not a minor one nor one easily conceived by the police is immaterial. The rule of evidence we announce today gives sanct-on to a police practice swhich makes detention the means of investigation. Therein lies its vice. Hence, we do not reach the question whether a confession so Obtained violates the Fifth Amendment.

See, for example, 29 City Club Bulletin of Portland, Oregon, No 7, June 18, 1948.