1. The use in a prosecution for murder of a confession obtained
by officers of the law by coercing the accused is forbidden by the
due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. P.
316 U. S.
555.
2. The evidence shows that law enforcement officer, acting
beyond their authority and in violation of state law, arrested
without a warrant an ignorant Negro, accused of murder, and took
him by night and day to strange towns in several counties,
incarcerated him in several jails, and by these means and by
persistent questioning, coerced him to confess. The use of the
confession at the trial voids the conviction. Pp.
316 U. S. 550,
316 U. S.
555.
158 S.W.2d 516 reversed.
Certiorari,
post, p. 653, to review a judgment
affirming a sentence. The conviction was of murder without malice,
and the punishment assessed was confinement for three years in the
state penitentiary.
MR. JUSTICE BYRNES delivered the opinion of the Court.
Petitioner William Ward, a negro, was indicted at the September,
1939, term of the District Court of Titus County, Texas for the
murder of Levi Brown, a white man. He was placed on trial at that
term, but the jury
Page 316 U. S. 548
was unable to agree upon a verdict. At the January, 1941, term,
he was again tried, and found guilty of murder without malice, the
jury assessing his punishment at confinement in the State
penitentiary for three years. Upon appeal, the Court of Criminal
Appeals reversed the judgment of the District Court. On the State's
motion for rehearing, the Court reversed itself and affirmed the
judgment. Petitioner's motion for rehearing was denied, one Judge
dissenting. 158 S.W.2d 516. A petition for a writ of certiorari was
granted
in forma pauperis. 316 U.S. 653.
The evidence introduced at the trial was such that the jury
could have drawn the following conclusions: the deceased, who was
seventy-two years old, lived in Omaha, in Morris county. He had
previously resided at Mount Pleasant, in the adjoining county of
Titus. He went to Mt. Pleasant on Saturday, June 24, 1939. On
Saturday evening, he was seen for the last time, talking to
petitioner and a negro woman on a street corner two and a half
blocks south of where his body was found. He then moved off
northward along the street followed at a little distance by
petitioner and the woman. A short time later, petitioner and the
woman returned to the corner. They separated there, and she walked
off to the south while he returned in the direction in which the
deceased had gone. The body was discovered on Sunday morning lying
in a field in grass about knee high. There were no signs of a
struggle and no evidence of robbery. The skin on the neck was
bruised and discolored, the face was swollen and the eyes
distended. The front of the trousers was open and there was blood
on the tail of the shirt. For some time, the deceased had been
afflicted with a heart ailment, and, under advice of his physician,
regularly took digitalis. He had taken a dose on Saturday before
leaving his home. The examining physician, however, found that
death was due to strangulation.
Page 316 U. S. 549
The Court of Criminal Appeals, in its final opinion denying
petitioner's motion for a rehearing, concluded: "It may be stated
bluntly that no conviction could be sustained in the present case
without the confession of appellant." The details of the confession
need not be recited. It is sufficient to say that, in it,
petitioner stated that, under his agreement with deceased, he was
to receive one dollar; that the deceased refused to pay him, and
cursed him and hit him; that he grabbed the deceased, choked him
for nearly five minutes, and, not knowing whether he was dead or
alive, left him on the ground.
Petitioner contends that this confession was signed by him only
after he had been arrested without a warrant, taken from his home
town, driven for three days from county to county, placed in a jail
more than 100 miles from his home, questioned continuously, and
beaten, whipped and burned by the officer to whom the confession
was finally made. We granted certiorari in order to determine
whether the confession was the result of such coercion and duress
that its use by the State at the trial constituted a denial of the
due process of law guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.
In its first opinion reversing the judgment of conviction, the
Texas Court of Criminal Appeals concluded that the methods employed
in obtaining the confession violated applicable Texas statutes. It
added that the reversal of the conviction was "in keeping with the
recent decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in
White v. Texas, 310 U. S. 530," in
which we set aside a conviction because it was based upon a
confession obtained by means repugnant to the due process clause of
the Fourteenth Amendment. But, in its second opinion, reinstating
the judgment of conviction, the Court of Criminal Appeals decided
that there was a conflict of evidence with respect to the issues
upon which the admissibility of the confession
Page 316 U. S. 550
depended, and that the question of admissibility was solely for
the jury, and had been submitted with proper instructions. It
concluded that
"no matter what our personal belief might be, we do not feel
that we have, nor do we usurp the power to set aside the finding of
this jury in the case at bar."
Each State has the right to prescribe the tests governing the
admissibility of a confession. In various States there may be
various tests. But when, as in this case, the question is properly
raised as to whether a defendant has been denied the due process of
law guaranteed by the Federal Constitution, we cannot be precluded
by the verdict of a jury from determining whether the circumstances
under which the confession was made were such that its admission in
evidence amounts to a denial of due process.
The undisputed evidence shows that the signing of the confession
was preceded by the following events. Petitioner was employed as a
house servant in Mount Pleasant by Judge S.B. Caldwell, a member of
the bar of Titus county. When the body of the deceased was
discovered on Sunday, June 25, petitioner was taken to the
courthouse for questioning, along with several other negroes. He
pleaded his innocence. During the examination, he was slapped by a
constable named Redfearn, who gave as his reason that petitioner
told him he "didn't know what he was talking about, and Quilla
Gaddis was a liar." Having no justification for holding him in
custody, the county attorney, at the request of Judge Caldwell, let
petitioner return to his home. Thereafter, on Sunday and Monday, he
was questioned by officers several times, and reiterated his
assertions of innocence. On Tuesday, the officers were still
questioning several negroes in connection with their investigation
of the crime. According to the county attorney, they had no
evidence by Tuesday night to justify the arrest of petitioner. On
that night, while petitioner was attending a party at his church in
Mount Pleasant, he was called
Page 316 U. S. 551
out, handcuffed, and taken into custody by the sheriff of Morris
county, which adjoins Titus county. The sheriff was not accompanied
by any officer of Titus county. He took petitioner and another
negro in his car and drove them out of the city to Hart's Creek,
where he had arranged to meet Constable Redfearn of Titus county,
the man who had slapped petitioner on Sunday. The officers then
carried petitioner and two other negroes to Daingerfield in Morris
county, where the deceased had resided, then to Pittsburg in Camp
county, and then to Gilmer in Upshur county, where he spent the
night in jail. On Wednesday night, he was taken back to jail in
Pittsburg. Constable Redfearn visited him from time to time, and on
Thursday morning, took him to Tyler in Smith county, where Redfearn
placed him in the custody of two highway patrolmen, advising them
of the details of the crime. About thirty minutes later, the
patrolmen carried petitioner to Athens, in Henderson county, and
turned him over to Sheriff Sweeten. Athens is 110 miles from Mount
Pleasant. During this time, he had been questioned continuously.
According to the county attorney of Titus county, who questioned
petitioner in three different jails on three different days,
petitioner stated once in Gilmer and again in Pittsburg that he
would be glad to make any statement that "I wanted him to make, but
that he didn't do it." After Sheriff Sweeten had talked to
petitioner, the latter signed the confession before a county
attorney. Within six hours after his arrival in Athens, he was
returned to Tyler. Eventually he was taken back to Gilmer, where he
was kept until the trial.
These facts are not disputed. Petitioner's contention that he
was beaten, whipped, and burned by Sheriff Sweeten just before the
confession was made, however, was squarely denied. All of the
officers involved asserted that he had not been mistreated, with
the exception of the slap by Redfearn. Sweeten's explanation of how
the confession was
Page 316 U. S. 552
obtained was: "We just talked that confession out of him. It
took us 20 to 30 minutes to get that confession." And one of the
patrolmen who took petitioner to the jail in Athens stated: "We
just talked to him to get that statement. Yes sir, we just sweet
talked him out of it." Several witnesses who were not officers
testified that they had examined petitioner's body and found no
bruises or burns. Only the sheriff of Titus county corroborated
petitioner's charges. He testified that, when petitioner was back
in the Gilmer jail several days after the confession,
"I saw some marks on his neck and shoulders and arms that
appeared to be cigarette stub burns. Yes sir, they were fresh.
There were several of them on his body."
Conceding that the question of physical mistreatment was
conclusively resolved by the jury's verdict, we return to the
admitted facts. There can be no doubt that, from first to last, the
officers acted without authority of law. The sheriff of Morris
county had no power to arrest petitioner in Titus county. Without
the boundaries of Morris county, he had no more authority than any
private citizen.
Ledbetter v. State, 23 Tex. App. 247, 5
S.W. 226;
Hooper v. Diesher, 113 S.W.2d 966, 967. Nor did
Constable Redfearn of Titus county have the right to take
petitioner into custody. Under Article 215 of the Texas Code of
Criminal Procedure, the sheriff must procure a warrant before
making an arrest unless he has been advised by a credible person
that a felony has been committed and that the offender is about to
escape.
See Rutherford v. State, 104 Tex.Cr. 127, 283 S.W.
512. And Article 217 provides that the person making the arrest
must immediately take the person arrested before the magistrate if
the arrest is made without a warrant. Neither the sheriff of Morris
county nor Constable Redfearn made any effort to secure a warrant.
Instead of taking petitioner to the nearest magistrate, they took
him away from the nearest magistrate. There was no pretense that
the arrest was made because of information
Page 316 U. S. 553
that he was about to escape. He had been released on Sunday
after his first detention, and on Tuesday evening he was attending
a party at his church when the sheriff of Morris county arrested
him.
Petitioner contends that he was moved from Titus county because
the officers feared that, if he were placed in jail there, Judge
Caldwell would apply for a writ of habeas corpus to secure his
release, and because they would be able to obtain the confession
from him more easily in a strange place. The State's answer is that
the officers' purpose was to protect him from threatened mob
violence.
In the first place, the procedure required by law was not
observed in making the removal. Article 262 of the Code of Criminal
Procedure provides that, if there is no safe jail in the county in
which the prosecution is carried on, the magistrate may commit the
prisoner to the nearest safe jail in any other county. Here, no
application was made to a magistrate for a committal to a jail in
another county.
In the second place, the evidence of threatened mob violence is
extremely vague, and by no means adequately explains the course of
the officers' activities. The only testimony on this subject is
that, in Morris county, where deceased lived, one or two persons
had expressed the opinion that the man who killed him should be
given a "neck-tie party," and that some people in Titus county had
talked about the "possibility of threatening mob violence." Yet,
immediately after the arrest, petitioner was taken into Morris
county, where the feeling was supposedly running highest. In
conversation with two attorneys in Mount Pleasant prior to the
Tuesday night arrest, Constable Redfearn complained about "the
trouble we were having in questioning William Ward" because of
Judge Caldwell's interference. At the trial, he stated:
"In moving the defendant, as I have testified, the sole and only
consideration in doing so was to get a statement from the negro in
talking to him alone or in connection with others who
Page 316 U. S. 554
possibly knew something about the crime and I was protecting him
against rumors of possible mob violence."
Rolston, county attorney of Titus county, was asked at the trial
whether the reason for taking petitioner out of Titus county was to
prevent Judge Caldwell "from getting out a writ of habeas corpus."
He replied:
"I do not know whether that is all the reason or not. I didn't
advise the officers to take him out. . . . I know there was some
plan on foot to take him out."
And he testified further:
"It is a fact that Mr. Redfearn and some of the other officers
told me about the Edwards negro, that they were going to try to get
them out of Mount Pleasant and question her and then question
William and try to confront the two with the statement of each
other and try to get them to break down and tell the truth about
it."
Speaking of the conduct of the officers, the Court of Criminal
Appeals in its first opinion said:
"We give effect to the good faith and intent of the officers in
moving appellant out of Titus County in order to secure his safety.
Yet we cannot subscribe to the idea that it was necessary to carry
him 110 miles, to Athens, Texas, for that purpose. That such was
not the reason appellant was carried to Athens is demonstrated by
the fact that he was kept there only twenty or thirty minutes,
[
Footnote 1] and was carried
back to Tyler, immediately after he had made the confession. The
conclusion is inescapable that he was carried to Athens as part of
the plan to 'get a statement from the negro,' and which had failed
up to that time."
We are not persuaded that the initial removal of petitioner from
Titus county was prompted by fear for his safety, but we concur in
the
Page 316 U. S. 555
Texas Court's opinion as to the motive that prompted the
officers to transport him as far as Athens.
The effect of moving an ignorant negro by night and day to
strange towns, telling him of threats of mob violence, and
questioning him continuously is evident from petitioner's statement
to County Attorney Rolston that he would be glad to make any
statement that Rolston desired. Disregarding petitioner's claims
that he was whipped and burned, we must conclude that this
confession was not free and voluntary, but was the product of
coercion and duress, that petitioner was no longer able freely to
admit or to deny or to refuse to answer, and that he was willing to
make any statement that the officers wanted him to make.
This Court has set aside convictions based upon confessions
extorted from ignorant persons who have been subjected to
persistent and protracted questioning, or who have been threatened
with mob violence, or who have been unlawfully held incommunicado
without advice of friends or counsel, or who have been taken at
night to lonely and isolated places for questioning. [
Footnote 2] Any one of these grounds would be
sufficient cause for reversal. All of them are to be found in this
case.
The use of a confession obtained under such circumstances is a
denial of due process and the judgment of conviction must be
reversed.
Reversed.
[
Footnote 1]
It appears from the record that petitioner was actually in
Athens for several hours. However, the significant fact that he was
returned to Tyler immediately after signing the confession is not
controverted. It is difficult to imagine that the object in
carrying him from Tyler to Athens was to secure him from harm.
[
Footnote 2]
Wan v. United States, 266 U. S. 1,
266 U. S. 14;
Brown v. Mississippi, 297 U. S. 278;
Chambers v. Florida, 309 U. S. 227,
309 U. S. 241;
Canty v. Alabama, 309 U.S. 629;
White v. Texas,
310 U. S. 530;
Lomax v. Texas, 313 U.S. 544;
Vernon v. Alabama,
313 U.S. 547.