1. A 15-year-old boy was arrested about midnight on a charge of
murder, and questioned by relays of police from shortly after
midnight until about 5 a.m. without benefit of counsel or any
friend to advise him. When confronted with alleged confessions of
his alleged accomplices around 5 a.m., he signed a confession typed
by the police. This confession was admitted in evidence over his
protest, and he was convicted.
Held: the methods used in obtaining this confession
violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and
the conviction cannot be sustained. Pp.
332 U. S.
597-601.
2. The ruling of the trial court admitting the confession in
evidence and the finding of the jury that the confession was
voluntary did not foreclose the independent examination which it is
the duty of this Court to make in such case. P.
332 U. S.
599.
3. The fact that this 15-year-old boy was formally advised of
his constitutional rights just before he signed the confession does
not alter the result. Formulas of respect for constitutional
safeguards may not become a cloak for inquisitorial practices and
make an empty form of due process of law. P.
332 U. S.
601.
147 Ohio St. 340, 70 N.E.2d 905, reversed.
Petitioner's conviction for murder was sustained by the Court of
Appeals of Ohio. 79 Ohio App. 237, 34 O.O. 568, 72 N.E.2d 785. The
Supreme Court of Ohio dismissed an appeal. 147 Ohio St. 340, 70
N.E.2d 905. The Court granted certiorari. 331 U.S. 803.
Reversed, p.
332 U. S.
601.
Page 332 U. S. 597
MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS announced the judgment of the Court and an
opinion in which MR. JUSTICE BLACK, MR. JUSTICE MURPHY, and MR.
JUSTICE RUTLEDGE join.
Petitioner was convicted in an Ohio court of murder in the first
degree and sentenced to life imprisonment. The Court of Appeals of
Ohio sustained the judgment of conviction over the objection that
the admission of petitioner's confession at the trial violated the
Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. 79 Ohio App. 237, 72
N.E.2d 785. The Ohio Supreme Court, being of the view that no
debatable constitutional question was presented, dismissed the
appeal. 147 Ohio St. 340, 70 N.E.2d 905. The case is here on a
petition for a writ of certiorari which we granted because we had
doubts whether the ruling of the court below could be squared with
Chambers v. Florida, 309 U. S. 227;
Malinski v. New York, 324 U. S. 401, and
like cases in this Court.
A confectionery store was robbed near midnight on October 14,
1945, and William Karam, its owner, was shot. It was the
prosecutor's theory, supported by some evidence which it is
unnecessary for us to relate, that petitioner, a Negro boy age 15,
and two others, Willie Lowder, age 16, and Al Parks, age 17,
committed the crime, petitioner acting as a lookout. Five days
later -- around midnight October 19, 1945 -- petitioner was
arrested at his home and taken to police headquarters.
There is some contrariety in the testimony as to what then
transpired. There is evidence that he was beaten. He took the stand
and so testified. His motor testified that the clothes he wore when
arrested, which were exchanged two days later for clean ones she
brought to the jail, were torn and blood-stained. She also
testified that, when she first saw him five days after his arrest
he was bruised and skinned. The police testified to the contrary on
this entire line of testimony. So we put to one side the
Page 332 U. S. 598
controverted evidence. Taking only the undisputed testimony
(
Malinski v. New York, supra, p.
324 U. S. 404
and cases cited), we have the following sequence of events.
Beginning shortly after midnight, this 15-year old lad was
questioned by the police for about five hours. Five or six of the
police questioned him in relays of one or two each. During this
time, no friend or counsel of the boy was present. Around 5 a.m. --
after being shown alleged confessions of Lowder and Parks -- the
boy confessed. A confession was typed in question and answer form
by the police. At no time was this boy advised of his right to
counsel, but the written confession started off with the following
statement:
"we want to inform you of your constitutional rights, the law
gives you the right to make this statement or not as you see fit.
It is made with the understanding that it may be used at a trial in
court either for or against you or anyone else involved in this
crime with you, of your own free will and accord, you are under no
force or duress or compulsion and no promises are being made to you
at this time whatsoever."
"Do you still desire to make this statement and tell the truth
after having had the above clause read to you?"
"A. Yes."
He was put in jail about 6 or 6:30 a.m. on Saturday, the 20th,
shortly after the confession was signed. Between then and Tuesday,
the 23d, he was held incommunicado. A lawyer retained by his mother
tried to see him twice, but was refused admission by the police.
His mother was not allowed to see him until Thursday, the 25th. But
a newspaper photographer was allowed to see him and take his
picture in the early morning hours of the 20th, right after he had
confessed. He was not taken before a magistrate and formally
charged with a crime
Page 332 U. S. 599
until the 23d -- three days after the confession was signed.
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 that it violated his rights under the
Fourteenth Amendment. 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.
Ashcraft v. Tennessee, 322 U. S. 143,
322 U. S.
147-148. If the undisputed evidence suggests that force
or coercion was used to exact the confession, we will not permit
the judgment of conviction to stand even though, without the
confession, there might have been sufficient evidence for
submission to the jury.
Malinski v. New York, supra, p.
324 U. S. 404,
and cases cited.
We do not think the methods used in obtaining this confession
can be squared with that due process of law which the Fourteenth
Amendment commands.
What transpired would make us pause for careful inquiry if a
mature man were involved. And when, as here, a mere child -- an
easy victim of the law -- is before us, special care in
scrutinizing the record must be used. Age 15 is a tender and
difficult age for a boy of any race. He cannot be judged by the
more exacting standards of maturity. That which would leave a man
cold and unimpressed can overawe and overwhelm a lad in his early
teens. This is the period of great instability which the crisis of
adolescence produces. A 15-year old lad, questioned through the
dead of night by relays of police, is a ready victim of the
inquisition. Mature men possibly might stand the ordeal from
midnight to 5 a.m. But we cannot believe that a lad of tender years
is
Page 332 U. S. 600
a match for the police in such a contest. He needs counsel and
support if he is not to become the victim first of fear, then of
panic. He needs someone on whom to lean lest the overpowering
presence of the law, as he knows it, may not crush him. No friend
stood at the side of this 15-year old boy as the police, working in
relays, questioned him hour after hour, from midnight until dawn.
No lawyer stood guard to make sure that the police went so far and
no farther, to see to it that they stopped short of the point where
he became the victim of coercion. No counsel or friend was called
during the critical hours of questioning. A photographer was
admitted once this lad broke and confessed. But not even a gesture
towards getting a lawyer for him was ever made.
This disregard of the standards of decency is underlined by the
fact that he was kept incommunicado for over three days during
which the lawyer retained to represent him twice tried to see him
and twice was refused admission. A photographer was admitted at
once; but his closest friend -- his mother -- was not allowed to
see him for over five days after his arrest. It is said that these
events are not germane to the present problem because they happened
after the confession was made. But they show such a callous
attitude of the police towards the safeguards which respect for
ordinary standards of human relationships compels that we take with
a grain of salt their present apologia that the five-hour grilling
of this boy was conducted in a fair and dispassionate manner. When
the police are so unmindful of these basic standards of conduct in
their public dealings, their secret treatment of a 15-year old boy
behind closed doors in the dead of night becomes darkly
suspicious.
The age of petitioner, the hours when he was grilled, the
duration of his quizzing, the fact that he had no friend or counsel
to advise him, the callous attitude of
Page 332 U. S. 601
the police towards his rights combine to convince us that this
was a confession wrung from a child by means which the law should
not sanction. Neither man nor child can be allowed to stand
condemned by methods which flout constitutional requirements of due
process of law.
But we are told that this boy was advised of his constitutional
rights before he signed the confession and that, knowing them, he
nevertheless confessed. That assumes, however, that a boy of
fifteen, without aid of counsel, would have a full appreciation of
that advice, and that, on the facts of this record, he had a
freedom of choice. We cannot indulge those assumptions. Moreover,
we cannot give any weight to recitals which merely formalize
constitutional requirements. Formulas of respect for constitutional
safeguards cannot prevail over the facts of life which contradict
them. They may not become a cloak for inquisitorial practices and
make an empty form of the due process of law for which free men
fought and died to obtain.
The course we followed in
Chambers v. Florida, supra, White
v. Texas, 310 U. S. 530,
Ashcraft v. Tennessee, supra, and
Malinski v. New
York, supra, must be followed here. The Fourteenth Amendment
prohibits the police from using the private, secret custody of
either man or child as a device for wringing confessions from
them.
Reversed.
MR. JUSTICE FRANKFURTER, joining in reversal of judgment.
In a recent series of cases, beginning with
Brown v.
Mississippi, 297 U. S. 278, the
Court has set aside convictions coming here from State courts
because they were based on confessions admitted under circumstances
that offended the requirements of the "due process" exacted
Page 332 U. S. 602
from the States by the Fourteenth Amendment. If the rationale of
those cases ruled this, we would dispose of it per curiam with the
mere citation of the cases. They do not rule it. Since, at best,
this Court's reversal of a State court's conviction for want of due
process always involves a delicate exercise of power, and since
there is a sharp division as to the propriety of its exercise in
this case, I deem it appropriate to state as explicitly as possible
why, although I have doubts and difficulties, I cannot support
affirmance of the conviction.
The doubts and difficulties derive from the very nature of the
problem before us. They arise frequently when this Court is obliged
to give definiteness to "the vague contours" of Due Process or, to
change the figure, to spin judgment upon State action out of that
gossamer concept. Subtle and even elusive as its criteria are, we
cannot escape that duty of judicial review. The nature of the duty,
however, makes it especially important to be humble in exercising
it. Humility in this context means an alert self-scrutiny so as to
avoid infusing into the vagueness of a Constitutional command one's
merely private notions. Like other mortals, judges, though unaware,
may be in the grip of prepossessions. The only way to relax such a
grip, the only way to avoid finding in the Constitution the
personal bias one has placed in it, is to explore the influences
that have shaped one's unanalyzed views in order to lay bare
prepossessions.
A lifetime's preoccupation with criminal justice, as prosecutor,
defender of civil liberties, and scientific student, naturally
leaves one with views. Thus, I disbelieve in capital punishment.
But, as a judge, I could not impose the views of the very few
States who, through bitter experience, have abolished capital
punishment upon all the other States by finding that "due process"
proscribes it. Again, I do not believe that even capital offenses
by boys of fifteen should be dealt with according
Page 332 U. S. 603
to the conventional criminal procedure. It would, however, be
bald judicial usurpation to hold that States violate the
Constitution in subjecting minors like Haley to such a procedure.
If a State, consistently with the Fourteenth Amendment, may try a
boy of fifteen charged with murder by the ordinary criminal
procedure, I cannot say that such a youth is never capable of that
free choice of action which, in the eyes of the law, makes a
confession "voluntary." Again, it would hardly be a justifiable
exercise of judicial power to dispose of this case by finding in
the Due Process Clause constitutional outlawry of the admissibility
of all private statements made by an accused to a police officer
however much legislation to that effect might seem to me wise.
See The Indian Evidence Act of 1872, § 25;
cf. §
26.
But whether a confession of a lad of fifteen is "voluntary" and
as such admissible, or "coerced" and thus wanting in due process,
is not a matter of mathematical determination. Essentially it
invites psychological judgment -- a psychological judgment that
reflects deep, even if inarticulate, feelings of our society.
Judges must divine that feeling as best they can from all the
relevant evidence and light which they can bring to bear for a
confident judgment of such an issue, and with every endeavor to
detach themselves from their merely private views. (It is
noteworthy that, while American experience has been drawn upon in
the framing of constitutions for other democratic countries, the
Due Process Clause has not been copied.
See also the
illuminating debate on the proposal to amend the Irish Home Rule
Bill by incorporating our Due Process Clause. 42 H.C.Deb.
2082-2091, 2215-2267 (5th ser., Oct. 22, 23, 1912).)
While the issue thus formulated appears vague and impalpable, it
cannot be too often repeated that the limitations which the Due
Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment placed upon the methods
by which the States
Page 332 U. S. 604
may prosecute for crime cannot be more narrowly conceived. This
Court must give the freest possible scope to States in the choice
of their methods of criminal procedure. But these procedures cannot
include methods that may fairly be deemed to be in conflict with
deeply rooted feelings of the community.
See concurring
opinions in
Malinski v. New York, 324 U.
S. 401,
324 U. S. 412,
and
Louisiana ex rel. Francis v. Resweber, 329 U.
S. 459,
329 U. S. 466.
Of course, this is a most difficult test to apply, but apply it we
must, warily, and from case to case.
This brings me to the precise issue on the record before us.
Suspecting a fifteen-year-old boy of complicity in murder resulting
from attempted robbery at about midnight, the police took him from
his home to police headquarters. There, he was questioned for about
five hours by at least five police officers, who interrogated in
relays of two or more. About five o'clock in the morning this
procedure culminated in what the police regarded as a confession,
whereupon it was formally reduced to writing. During the course of
the interrogation, the boy was not advised that he was not obliged
to talk, that it was his right if he chose to say not a word, nor
that he was entitled to have the benefit of counsel or the help of
his family. Bearing upon the safeguards of these rights, the Chief
of Police admitted that, while he knew that the boy "had a right to
remain mute and not answer any questions," he did not know that it
was the duty of the police to apprise him of that fact.
Unquestionably, during this whole period, he was held
incommunicado. Only after the night-long questioning had resulted
in disclosures satisfactory to the police, and, as such, to be
documented, was there read to the boy a clause giving the
conventional formula about his constitutional right to make or
withhold a statement and stating that if he makes it, he makes it
of his "own free will." Do these uncontested fact justify a State
court in
Page 332 U. S. 605
finding that the boy's confession was "voluntary," or do the
circumstances, by their very nature, preclude a finding that a
deliberate and responsible choice was exercised by the boy in the
confession that came at the end of five hours questioning?
The answer, as has already been intimated, depends on an
evaluation of psychological factors, or, more accurately stated,
upon the persuasive feeling of society regarding such psychological
factors. Unfortunately, we cannot draw upon any formulated
expression of the existence of such feeling. Nor are there
available experts on such matters to guide the judicial judgment.
Our Constitutional system makes it the Court's duty to interpret
those feelings of society to which the Due Process Clause gives
legal protection. Because of their inherent vagueness, the tests by
which we are to be guided are most unsatisfactory, but, such as
they are, we must apply them.
The Ohio courts have in effect denied that the very nature of
the circumstances of the boy's confession precludes a finding that
it was voluntary. Their denial carries great weight, of course. It
requires much to be overborne. But it does not end the matter.
Against it, we have the judgment that comes from judicial
experience with the conduct of criminal trials as they pass in
review before this Court. An impressive series of cases in this and
other courts admonishes of the temptations to abuse of police
endeavors to secure confessions from suspects, through protracted
questioning carried on in secrecy, with the inevitable disquietude
and fears police interrogations naturally engender in individuals
questioned while held incommunicado, without the aid of counsel and
unprotected by the safeguards of a judicial inquiry. Disinterested
zeal for the public good does not assure either wisdom or right in
the methods it pursues. A report of President Hoover's National
Commission on Law Observance
Page 332 U. S. 606
and Enforcement gave proof of the fact, unfortunately, that
these potentialities of abuse were not the imaginings of mawkish
sentimentality, nor their tolerance desirable or necessary for a
stern policy against crime. Legislation throughout the country
reflects a similar belief that detention for purposes of eliciting
confessions through secret, persistent, long continued
interrogation violates sentiments deeply embedded in the feelings
of our people.
See McNabb v. United States, 318 U.
S. 332,
318 U. S.
342-343.
It is suggested that Haley's guilt could easily have been
established without the confession elicited by the sweating process
of the night's secret interrogation. But this only affords one more
proof that, in guarding against misuse of the law enforcement
process, the effective detection of crime and the prosecution of
criminals are furthered, and not hampered. Such constitutional
restraints of decency derive from reliance upon the resources of
intelligence in dealing with crime and discourage the too easy
temptations of unimaginative crude force, even when such force is
not brutally employed.
It would disregard standards that we cherish as part of our
faith in the strength and wellbeing of a rational, civilized
society to hold that a confession is "voluntary" simply because the
confession is the product of a sentient choice. "Conduct under
duress involves a choice,"
Union Pacific R. Co. v. Public
Service Commission, 248 U. S. 67,
248 U. S. 70,
and conduct devoid of physical pressure but not leaving a free
exercise of choice is the product of duress as much so as choice
reflecting physical constraint.
Unhappily we have neither physical nor intellectual weights and
measures by which judicial judgment can determine when pressures in
securing a confession reach the coercive intensity that calls for
the exclusion of a statement so secured. Of course, the police
meant to
Page 332 U. S. 607
exercise pressures upon Haley to make him talk. That was the
very purpose of their procedure. In concluding that a statement is
not voluntary which results from pressures such as were exerted in
this case to make a lad of fifteen talk when the Constitution gave
him the right to keep silent and when the situation was so
contrived that appreciation of his rights and thereby the means of
asserting them were effectively withheld from him by the police, I
do not believe I express a merely personal bias against such a
procedure. Such a finding, I believe, reflects those fundamental
notions of fairness and justice in the determination of guilt or
innocence which lie embedded in the feelings of the American people
and are enshrined in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment. To remove the inducement to resort to such methods this
Court has repeatedly denied use of the fruits of illicit
methods.
Accordingly, I think Haley's confession should have been
excluded, and the conviction based upon it should not stand.
MR. JUSTICE BURTON, with whom The CHIEF JUSTICE, MR. JUSTICE
REED and MR. JUSTICE JACKSON concur, dissenting.
The issue here is a narrow one of fact turning largely upon the
credibility of witnesses whose testimony on material points is in
direct conflict with that of other witnesses. The judgment rendered
today by this Court does not hold that the procedure authorized by
the State of Ohio to determine the admissibility of the confession
of a person accused of a capital offense violates
per se
the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. It holds merely
that the application made of that procedure in this case amounted
to a violation of due process under the Fourteenth Amendment in
that, on this record,
Page 332 U. S. 608
it amounted to a refusal by the trial court to exclude from the
jury this particular confession which this Court is convinced was
an involuntary confession.
The following facts are not disputed:
About midnight, on October 14, 1945, a storekeeper in Canton,
Ohio, was shot to death in his store by one of two boys, Alfred
Parks, aged 16, or Willie Lowder, aged 17. The accused, John Harvey
Haley, then about 15 years and 8 months old and a senior in high
school, was with these boys before they went into the store and was
waiting for them outside of it at the time when the shooting
occurred. Haley testified "all of a sudden I heard a shot and a man
hollered, and I was scared and I ran." The two other boys also ran
away immediately after the shot was fired. The three soon met, and
Haley then went home. These boys had been together all that
evening. Early in the evening, while Parks and Lowder waited
outside of Haley's home, Haley went in to get a pistol for their
joint use. Without the knowledge of William Mack, the owner of the
pistol, Haley took from a trunk a .32 caliber automatic pistol
which Haley had shot once on New Year's Day and, from another place
in his home, a handful of ammunition for the pistol. The three boys
took part in loading it. Haley then turned it over to Parks and
Lowder, one or the other of whom thereafter retained possession of
it throughout the evening. A day or two after the shooting, Haley
asked the two boys what they had done with the gun. He testified
that in answer "They said they got rid of it." This much of the
story Haley testified to at the trial and has admitted
substantially ever since his arrest and since abandoning his first,
and admittedly false, statement that he and his two friends had
gone to a show that evening. A .32 caliber automatic Colt pistol,
the admission of which in evidence is not here in issue, was sent
by the Canton police to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for
identification,
Page 332 U. S. 609
together with the bullet which killed the storekeeper and a
cartridge shell found by the police at the scene of the crime. An
uncontradicted expert witness from the FBI fired three bullets from
the pistol, compared the microscopic markings on them with those on
the bullet which had killed the storekeeper and, on this basis,
positively identified the pistol as the weapon which had fired the
fatal shot. This fatal shot admittedly was fired while Parks and
Lowder were in the store of the deceased and were in possession of
the pistol with which Haley had supplied them. There is nothing in
the record to suggest the presence in the store of any other
pistol. Haley testified that this pistol "looked like" the one he
had given to his companions.
After hearing the foregoing and other material evidence,
including the disputed confession of Haley, the jury found him
guilty of murder in the first degree while attempting to perpetrate
robbery. The verdict carried a recommendation of mercy which
automatically reduced the statutory penalty from death to life
imprisonment. In considering the record as a whole, and
particularly in reaching a conclusion of fact that the police
officers who examined Haley coerced him into making his confession,
it is appropriate to note that the foregoing undisputed facts left
comparatively little need for such a confession as was signed by
Haley. That confession, in substance, added only the express
statement by Haley that he knew that Parks and Lowder went into the
store to rob the storekeeper and that Haley remained outside to
serve as a lookout and to warn Parks and Lowder by tapping on the
window in case anyone approached.
The procedure followed by the police as soon as they had the
information upon which they arrested Haley was substantially as
follows:
On Friday, October 19, 1945, again at about midnight, and while
Haley was still up and about his home, after
Page 332 U. S. 610
having returned from an evening football game, he was arrested
by four policemen who came to his home in two cars. They were
admitted to Haley's home by his mother, and they took him with them
to police headquarters, not using handcuffs. He was "booked" there
at about 12:30 a.m. From then until between 3 and 4 a.m., he was in
the record room of the detective bureau, usually with two officers.
What took place there leading up to his oral, and later signed,
confession is the subject of directly contradictory testimony given
by the accused and the police. Haley testified that he was roughly
handled in such a manner that, if this testimony is believed, the
confession was not voluntary. On the other hand, the police and
everyone else who was present or saw Haley during or after this
examination testified in detail, and with positiveness, that Haley
was not abused or roughly handled in any degree, and that his
person and clothes presented a normal appearance after the
examination. Immediately after Haley had been shown alleged
confessions by Parks and Lowder and had read at least that by
Parks, Haley made an oral statement evidently similar to that made
by Parks. Thereupon, Haley was taken to a front room, where a
sergeant of detectives typed Haley's confession in question and
answer form during a period which consumed from one hour to an hour
and a half. Before taking this confession the sergeant testified
that he typed and read to Haley, clearly and distinctly, the
preliminary statement, a part of which is quoted in this Court's
opinion as being at the beginning of the written confession. The
sergeant testified that Haley, after hearing this introduction,
said that he still desired to make a statement and tell the truth.
When completed, the statement, so prepared, was signed by Haley in
the presence not only of some of the police officers who had
questioned him, but also of two civilian witnesses called in for
that purpose from outside of police headquarters.
Page 332 U. S. 611
The Acting Chief of Police, who himself was a member of the Bar
of Ohio, requested Haley to read the entire confession. When this
had been done, the Acting Chief of Police, in the capacity of a
notary public, administered the oath signed by Haley at the end of
the confession, stating that the facts contained therein were true
and correct as Haley verily believed. A newspaper photographer then
took a picture of Haley in company with Parks and Lowder. Either
then or on the following Monday, the date being disputed, Haley was
taken back to his home, where the police found the trunk described
by him as that from which he had taken the pistol. After his
confession, he was placed in the city jail and, on the following
Tuesday, October 23, he was removed to the county jail. On that
day, a complaint was filed in the Court of Common Pleas of Stark
County, Ohio, Division of Domestic Relations, Juvenile Department,
by a sergeant of police, charging Haley with being a delinquent
child.
On October 29, 1945, pursuant to a motion of the prosecuting
attorney, the judge assigned to the above-mentioned Domestic
Relations Division of the Court of Common Pleas appointed a doctor
to make a physical and mental examination of the accused.
On November 1, 1945, the mental and physical examination was
filed and, after hearing, the court found
"that the said child has committed an act which, if [it] had
been committed by an adult, would be a felony; an examination
having been made of the said John Haley by a competent physician,
qualified to make such examination, it is ordered that the said
John Haley shall personally be and appear before the of the next
term thereof to answer for of the next term thereof to answer for
such act."
On November 14, 1945, a transcript from the docket of the
above-mentioned Juvenile Court was filed in the Court of Common
Pleas. Thereafter, beginning with an indictment
Page 332 U. S. 612
for first degree murder which was returned on January 8, 1946,
the case proceeded to arraignment on January 11, and to trial in
the Court of Common Pleas March 25-April 3, when a verdict of
guilty as charged was returned, with a recommendation of mercy. A
motion for a new trial was overruled, and the case was appealed to
the Court of Appeals for Stark County, Ohio, and there was
unanimously affirmed October 25, 1946. Appeal was made, both on a
motion for leave to appeal and as a matter of right, to the Supreme
Court of Ohio. The motion for leave to appeal was overruled, and
the appeal, as a matter of right, was dismissed by unanimous action
of the five judges sitting in the case. The reason given for
dismissal was that the court found that no debatable constitutional
question was involved in the case. [
Footnote 1]
Beginning with the arraignment of the accused, the record shows
that Haley has been represented by counsel. The case has proceeded
in this Court
in forma pauperis, the accused being
represented by the same competent counsel who represented him in
the state courts. It does not appear that the accused ever asked to
have counsel appointed for him. It does not appear that at any time
before his arraignment, he employed counsel or asked for
Page 332 U. S. 613
counsel to represent him. The nearest approach to such action is
that disclosed by the testimony of Haley's mother and by a
stipulation between the parties that Leroy Contie, an attorney, on
Monday, October 22, was employed by Mrs. Haley to represent her
son. Mr. Contie went to the city jail on two occasions after
Haley's confession was signed, was unable to see him and was
refused admission by the police authorities. Mr. Contie did not see
Haley until after the latter had been transferred to the county
jail, some days after that. He apparently did not become an
attorney of record in the case.
It is not disputed on Haley's behalf that his arrest and
uncoercive questioning after his arrest would have been proper
under such circumstances. While the constitutional and statutory
rights of the accused under such circumstances must be safeguarded
carefully, it is equally clear that serious constitutional and
statutory obligations rest upon law enforcement officers to
discover promptly those guilty of such an unprovoked murder as had
been committed. Likewise, the comparative youth of these three boys
who now have been convicted of this murder is entitled to full
recognition in considering the constitutionality of the process of
law that has been applied to them. This has been done. Haley's
youth was recognized expressly by the preliminary proceedings
before the Juvenile Department of the Division of Domestic
Relations of the local court. Those proceedings markedly
differentiated the procedure from that ordinarily followed in the
case of an adult. Undoubtedly the thought of Haley's youth was
reflected in the jury's recommendation of mercy, and in the care
which the sergeant and the Acting Chief of Police testified that
they took in preparing his confession for signature and in seeing
to it that Haley understood it and his rights in connection with
it. It is necessary to recognize, on the other hand, that the
offense here charged was not an ordinary juvenile offense. It
Page 332 U. S. 614
was a capital offense of the most serious kind. It involved the
same fatal consequence to a law-abiding citizen of Canton as would
have been the case if it had been committed by adult offenders. An
obligation rests upon the police not only to discover the
perpetrators of such a crime, but also to determine, as promptly as
possible their guilt or innocence to a degree sufficient to justify
their prosecution or release. It is common knowledge that many
felonies are being committed currently by minors, and an obligation
attaches to law enforcement officials to punish, prevent and
discourage such conduct by minors as well as by adults. If Haley's
part in this crime had been reasonably suspected by the police
immediately after its commission at midnight, October 14, the
police would have deserved severe criticism if they had not
arrested and questioned him that night. The same obligation rested
on them, five days later at midnight, October 19.
As admitted by the petitioner in this Court, the entire issue
here resolves itself into a consideration of the methods used in
obtaining the confession. This, in turn, resolves itself primarily
into a question of the credibility of witnesses as a means of
determining the contested question as to what methods in fact were
used. A voluntary confession not only is valid, but it is the
usual, best and generally fairest kind of evidence. Often it is the
only direct evidence obtainable as to the state of mind of the
accused. The giving of such a confession promptly is to be
encouraged in the interest of all concerned. The police are
justified and under obligation to seek such confessions. At the
same time, it is a primary part of their obligation to see to it
that coercion, including intimidation, is not used to secure a
confession. It should be evident to them not only that involuntary
confessions are worthless as evidence, but that coercion applied in
securing them itself constitutes a serious violation of duty.
Page 332 U. S. 615
The question in this case is the simple one -- was the
confession in fact voluntary? As in many other cases, it is
difficult, because of conflicting testimony, to determine this
controlling fact. It may not be possible to become absolutely
certain of it. Self-serving perjury, however, must not be the
passkey to a mandatory exclusion of the confession from use as
evidence. It is for the trial judge and the jury, under the
safeguards of constitutional due process of criminal law, to apply
even-handed justice to the determination of the factual issues. To
do this, they need every available lawful aid to help them test the
credibility of the conflicting testimony.
Due process of law under the Fourteenth Amendment requires that
the states use some fair means to determine the voluntary character
of a confession like that in this case. The procedure may differ in
each state. The form adopted by Ohio is not criticized by this
Court. The sole question here is the validity of the application of
the Ohio procedure to the facts of this case. That application can
be tested in this Court only under the great handicap of attempting
to appraise, by use of the printed record, the action of the trial
court and jury taken in the light of the living record. In
connection with every confession that is unaccompanied by testimony
as to how it was secured, all sorts of conditions may be
conjectured as to the methods used to secure it. To rely upon
conjecture, either in favor of or against the accused, is not
justice. It is not due process of law by any definition. Similarly,
all sorts of conditions as to the methods which might have been
used in obtaining such a confession may be conjectured by a witness
and falsely testified to by him. Such action puts the true
testimony into direct conflict with the false. In the present case,
the conflict of testimony is so clear that it is evident that one
or more of the witnesses must have committed perjury. The issue
resolves itself, therefore, not into one of civil rights,
Page 332 U. S. 616
but into one of the truth or falsity of the testimony as to the
methods used in obtaining Haley's confession. This issue of
credibility cannot be resolved here with nearly as good a chance of
determining the truth as that which was enjoyed by the trial court
and jury. They saw and heard the witnesses and they examined the
exhibits. Furthermore, they and the State Appellate and Supreme
Courts also were familiar with the general conditions and standards
of law enforcement in effect in the long-established industrial
civic center of over 100,000 people of Canton, Ohio, where this
confession was made and used. The testimony of the witnesses as to
the methods used should be read in the context of the community
where such testimony was given in order for it to be fairly
appraised. There is no suggestion that racial discrimination or
prejudice existed in the attitude of any of the witnesses, or of
the courts or of the community of Canton. The issue is the
credibility of these particular police officers and other local
witnesses. It cannot be determined on the basis of published
reports, however authentic, of police methods in other communities
in other years. "The mere fact that a confession was made while in
the custody of the police does not render it inadmissible."
McNabb v. United States, 318 U. S. 332,
318 U. S.
346.
The present case, turning as it does upon the credibility of the
testimony as to the existence of the coercion, if any, that was
used to secure the confession, is readily distinguishable from
cases relied upon by the accused. For example, in the present case,
this Court does not rely on any claim that the confession was
elicited by unreasonably delaying the arraignment of the accused or
even by any alleged delay in charging him with delinquency in the
Juvenile Court. The confession of the accused was given,
transcribed and signed
Page 332 U. S. 617
by 5:30 a.m. on October 20, immediately following his arrest at
about midnight. There is, accordingly, no basis for contending that
there was unnecessary delay in taking the accused before a court or
magistrate having jurisdiction of the offense insofar as such
unnecessary delay, if any, had relation to the confession. Whatever
delay there was occurred after the confession was made, and it is
obvious that it was not unreasonable to delay the taking of the
accused before a court or magistrate at least until after 5:30 a.m.
United States v. Mitchell, 322 U. S.
65.
Cf. Anderson v. United States, 318 U.
S. 350;
McNabb v. United States, 318 U.
S. 332.
If the unequivocal and consistent testimony of the several
police officers is believed, including that of the Acting Chief of
Police, the confession was clearly voluntary. The police officers
were men of experience in the local detective service and, if
inferences are to be indulged in, it may be inferred that they
understood the necessity that the confession be uncoerced and
voluntary if it was to be admissible in evidence. The principal
examining officers were two detectives, one of nine and the other
of eleven years' police service. The sergeant of detectives who
typed the confession was a man of nine years' police service. Every
policeman who took any part in the examination was called as a
witness. Each testified that there was no use of force and no
intimidation during the examination. Each testified that, in fact,
the confession was uncoerced. The questioning of the accused was
described as having been carried on while the parties to it were
seated near a desk and not within arm's length of each other. It
was conducted in the record room of the detective bureau, rather
than in jail. The accused was not handcuffed nor subjected to
indignities. The police, the newspaper reporter, and the iceman who
was brought in to witness the accused's signature to the confession
testified
Page 332 U. S. 619
to the normal appearance of the clothing and person of the
accused during or following the examination, including the time he
was photographed. The witnesses testified only as to what they
severally had observed during the respective periods that they were
present, but, together, they covered the entire period of the
examination. If the confession was in fact voluntary, these
witnesses could not have said more to prove it. If their testimony
is true, it makes false much of the testimony of the accused. The
testing of the credibility of this testimony is therefore
important. This testimony, furthermore, should not be laid aside
here merely because it is in conflict with opposing testimony. If
the trial court and jury believed the police and disbelieved the
accused on this testimony, there was no substantial ground left for
any inference of coercion. If, on the contrary, they believed the
accused and therefore concluded that the police and other witnesses
agreeing with them were perjurers, the trial court could not fairly
have admitted the confession in evidence.
The evidence in the record includes ample evidence to support
the action taken by the trial judge and jury against the accused if
this Court chooses to believe that evidence and to disbelieve the
conflicting evidence. Furthermore, that evidence, if so believed,
is strong and specific enough greatly to offset conflicting
inferences which otherwise might be suggested to this Court by the
undisputed evidence.
As a reviewing court, we have a major obligation to guard
against reading into the printed record purely conjectural
concepts. To conjecture from the printed record of this case that
the accused, because of his known proximity to the scene of the
crime and his known association that night with the boys, one of
whom did the actual shooting, must have been a hardened, smart boy,
whose
Page 332 U. S. 619
conduct and falsehoods necessarily made all of his testimony
worthless
per se, is as unjustifiable as it would be to
assume, without seeing him or his mother as witnesses, that he was
an impressionable, innocent lad, likely to be panic-stricken by
police surroundings, and that all his testimony must be accepted as
true except where expressly admitted by him to have been false. To
assume from the printed record that the policemen, including the
Acting Chief, and the civilians who gave unequivocal testimony as
to the absence of force and intimidation in securing the confession
or as to the normal appearance of the accused and of his clothing
at the time of making the confession, were callous as to the
feelings of a boy 15 years of age or were guilty of deliberate
perjury would be as unjustifiable as it would be to assume, without
hearing and seeing the respective police officers, as witnesses,
that each of them was as well informed, tolerant, and thoughtful as
an ideal juvenile judge. In this case, this Court seems to have
laid aside all the conflicting testimony and then, without seeing
or hearing the witnesses, has attempted to draw, from the meager
balance of the record, important inferences of callousness and
coercion on the part of the examining officers. By disregarding the
conflicting material testimony instead of choosing between the true
and the false material testimony, the material record is reduced
largely to isolated items of subsequent conduct on the part of
certain police officers who are alleged to have hampered the boy's
mother or an attorney in trying to see him several days after his
confession. There is no likelihood that these officers were the
same ones who conducted the examination. [
Footnote 2] It
Page 332 U. S. 620
is not enough for this Court to say in its opinion today that,
if "the undisputed evidence suggests that force or coercion was
used to exact the confession, we will not permit the judgment of
conviction to stand. . . ." Recognition must be given also to the
right of the trial court to weigh the credibility of the material
disputed evidence.
We are not in a position, on the basis of mere suspicion, to
hold the trial court in error and to conclude "that this was a
confession wrung from a child by means which the law should not
sanction." While coercion and intimidation in securing a confession
should be unequivocally condemned and punished and their product
invalidated, nevertheless such coercion should not be presumed to
exist because of a mere suggestion or suspicion, in the face of
contrary findings by the triers of fact. On the basis of the
undisputed testimony relied upon by this Court, it is not justified
in making such a determination of "the callous attitude of the
police" of Canton as thereby to override not only the sworn
testimony of the State's public officials, but also the conclusions
of the triers of fact. The trial judge, with his first-hand
knowledge both of the credibility indicated by the testimony in
open court and of the habitual "attitude of the police"
Page 332 U. S. 621
of Canton, if there be any such attitude, found to the contrary.
That judge and the law enforcement officers of Canton have been
entrusted by the State of Ohio with the enforcement of the
constitutional obligations of the public to each individual and
also of each individual to the public. In the absence of
substantial proof to upset the findings of the trial court, these
public officers should not be charged with callousness toward, or
with violation of, their constitutional obligations.
The legal process governing the admission of confessions in
evidence in jury trials in Ohio in a case like this takes
conditions into consideration. The Ohio procedure provides for a
preliminary examination by the trial judge, out of the presence of
the jury, to determine whether the confession should be excluded as
involuntary. Such an examination was made at length in this case,
and the judge, in the absence of the jury, overruled the objection
made to the confession upon such ground. The motion was renewed in
the presence of the jury, and again denied. The judge likewise
refused to direct a verdict for Haley at the close of the State's
case and again at the close of the entire case. The admissibility
of the confession was fully argued in the trial court, and, before
its admission, the trial judge took the subject under advisement
while he adjourned the hearing over a weekend. Having decided that
the confession was not to be excluded, it was his duty to submit it
to the jury. He did this with ample instructions advising the jury
of its responsibility in connection with the confession. Testimony
then was given at length, in the presence of the jury, bearing upon
the voluntariness of the confession as well as upon the probable
truth or falsity of its contents. The final instructions of the
court emphasized not only the obligation and opportunity of the
jury to pass upon the voluntariness of the confession, but also its
obligation to give appropriate
Page 332 U. S. 622
weight to the confession in the light of all the testimony in
the event that the confession was found by the jury to have been a
voluntary one. [
Footnote 3]
Page 332 U. S. 623
The rule of law governing this case is stated in
Lisenba v.
California, 314 U. S. 219,
314 U. S.
238:
"There are cases, such as this one, where the evidence as to the
methods employed to obtain a confession is conflicting, and in
which, although denial of due process was not an issue in the
trial, an issue has been resolved by court and jury which involves
an answer to the due process question. In such a case,
we
accept the determination of the triers of fact unless it is so
lacking in support in the evidence that to give it effect would
work that fundamental unfairness which is at war with due
process."
(Italics supplied.)
This Court properly reserves to itself an opportunity to
consider the record in a case like this independently from the
consideration given to that record by the lower courts. However,
when credibility plays as large a part in the record as it does in
this case, this Court rarely
Page 332 U. S. 624
can justify a reversal of the judgment of the trial court and
the verdict of the jury. This is increasingly true where the
judgment of the trial court has been affirmed, as here, by two
State courts of review. In the preliminary examination as to the
admissibility of the confession in this case, the trial court may
have believed the police and disbelieved the accused. On that
basis, there is more than ample evidence to support the trial
court's conclusion in refusing to exclude the confession. A similar
statement may be made as to the presentation of evidence to the
jury. It is not justifiable for this Court, in testing the
conclusions of the triers of fact, to rely on inferences drawn
solely from those portions of the record which, when read
separately, apparently were not disputed. The acceptance of one
version or the other of the sharply conflicting testimony which was
before the triers of fact could reasonably justify a conclusion of
the trial court and jury to exclude or admit the confession without
reference to, or even in spite of, implications which might be
drawn from the comparatively colorless undisputed testimony if that
undisputed testimony stood alone. This Court should include in its
appraisal of the record not only the undisputed testimony, but it
also should allow for a reasonable conclusion by the trial court
and jury, based upon acceptance or rejection of the disputed
testimony. On this basis, this Court is not justified, in this
case, in holding that the determination by the trial judge that the
confession was admissible, or that the holding by the trial jury
that the confessor was guilty, "is so lacking in support in the
evidence that to give it effect would work that fundamental
unfairness which is at war with due process." [
Footnote 4]
In testing due process this Court must first make sure of its
facts. Until a better way is found for testing credibility than by
the examination of witnesses in open court,
Page 332 U. S. 625
we must give trial courts and juries that wide discretion in
this field to which a living record, as distinguished from a
printed record, logically entitles them. In this living record,
there are many guideposts to the truth which are not in the printed
record. Without seeing them ourselves, we will do well to give heed
to those who have seen them.
[
Footnote 1]
It appears from the opinion of the Court of Appeals for Stark
County in this case that the three boys were separately indicted
and tried. Lowder and Haley were tried by juries. Parks waived that
right, and was tried before three judges. Each was convicted of
murder in the first degree, with a recommendation of mercy. Appeals
from the three cases were heard together, and the judgments were
affirmed in each with a single opinion emphasizing the separate
consideration that had been given to each.
Ohio v. Lowder, Ohio
v. Haley, Ohio v. Parks, 79 Ohio App. 237, 72 N.E.2d 785.
See also Ohio v. Haley, 147 Ohio St. 340, 70 N.E.2d 905;
Ohio v. Lowder, 147 Ohio St. 530, 72 N.E.2d 102;
Ohio
v. Parks, 147 Ohio St. 531, 72 N.E.2d 81, where each appeal
was dismissed for lack of a debatable constitutional question.
[
Footnote 2]
In a case which arose in the District of Columbia, this Court
said:
"But the circumstances of legality attending the making of these
oral statements are nullified, it is suggested, by what followed.
For not until eight days after the statements were made was
Mitchell arraigned before a committing magistrate. Undoubtedly his
detention during this period was illegal. . . . Illegality is
illegality, and officers of the law should deem themselves special
guardians of the law. But, in any event, the illegality of
Mitchell's detention does not retroactively change the
circumstances under which he made the disclosures. These, we have
seen, were not elicited through illegality. Their admission
therefore would not be use by the Government of the fruits of
wrongdoing by its officers. Being relevant, they could be excluded
only as a punitive measure against unrelated wrongdoing by the
police. Our duty in shaping rules of evidence relates to the
propriety of admitting evidence. This power is not to be used as an
indirect mode of disciplining misconduct."
United States v. Mitchell, 322 U. S.
65,
322 U. S.
70-71.
[
Footnote 3]
The trial court included in its final instructions to the jury
the following:
"You will recall that I have heretofore said to you that, in
general, the judge determines the admissibility of evidence. But,
you will recall, I think, that, on Monday, just before certain
alleged statements or declarations claimed by the State to have
been made by the defendant, in part oral and in part consisting of
an alleged written or typed statement or declaration, identified as
State's Exhibit D, were by the judge permitted to be introduced
with the instruction that you the jury would, in the end and
finally, determine first, whether the defendant made said
statements and declarations, and if he did make it, whether they
were made by the defendant voluntarily and of his own free will;
and further in the event you should find he did make them and made
them voluntarily and of his free will, just what weight, if any,
should be accorded them."
"I now again direct your attention to that evidence. The State
claims the defendant made said statements and declarations, and
that he made them voluntarily and of his own free will. The
defendant denies the State's said claims, and asserts they were not
made voluntarily and of free will. You will decide these questions
from all the evidence in the case. Should you find from all the
evidence that the defendant did not make them, or if he made them
that he did not make them voluntarily and of his free will, you
will in that event disregard them entirely and not consider them
further. On the other hand, should you find defendant did make them
and that he made them voluntarily and of his own free will, you
will consider them as evidence and give them just such weight to
which you find from all the evidence they are entitled. Should you
find from the evidence that some of them were made by the defendant
and by him made voluntarily and of his free will, and find others
were not made by him, or if made by him, not made by him
voluntarily and of his free will, you will consider only those you
find were made by him voluntarily and of his free will and reject
the others. You will consider the alleged oral statements or
declarations, separate and apart from the said written or typed
statements, and the circumstances incident to each."
"You are instructed further that statements of guilt or
declarations of guilt, as they are sometimes called, made through
the influence of hopes or fears, statements or declarations induced
by promises of temporal benefit or threats of disadvantage, are to
be weighed and not to be considered of any value. Statements and
declarations which are not voluntary and of free will made are
excluded on the ground that they are probably not true. Another
ground for the exclusion is that it is a violation of the
constitutional provision that no man shall be required to give
evidence against himself, for if he is compelled by threats or
induced by hopes to make confession against himself, it is an
indirect method of compelling him to give evidence against himself,
when statements or declarations made under such circumstances are
afterwards proven against him in court. On the other hand, a free
will and voluntary statement or admission, made by a defendant
against his interest,
against his interest, is one of the
most satisfactory proofs of guilt, for an innocent person will not
voluntarily subject himself to infamy and liability to punishment
by false statements against himself."
"The State, having offered these statements or admissions, must
prove that they were made; but the burden of proving that a
particular statement or admission was obtained by improper
inducements, in general, is upon the defendant."
[
Footnote 4]
See Lisenba v. California, supra, p.
314 U. S.
238.