Petitioner was arrested on suspicion on a Wednesday and held
without arraignment, without the aid of counsel or friends, and
without advice as to his constitutional rights until the following
Tuesday, when he confessed to murder. Meanwhile, he was held much
of the time in solitary confinement in a cell with no place to sit
or sleep except on the floor, and was interrogated by relays of
police officers, usually until long past midnight. At his trial in
a state court, the confession was admitted in evidence over his
objection, and he was convicted.
Held: the use at the trial of a confession obtained in
this manner violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment, and the conviction is reversed. Pp.
388 U. S.
49-55.
226 Ind. 655, 82 N.E.2d 846, reversed.
MR. JUSTICE FRANKFURTER announced the judgment of the Court and
an opinion in which MR. JUSTICE MURPHY and MR. JUSTICE RUTLEDGE
join.
Although the Constitution puts protection against crime
predominantly in the keeping of the States, the
Page 338 U. S. 50
Fourteenth Amendment severely restricted the States in their
administration of criminal justice. Thus, while the State courts
have the responsibility for securing the rudimentary requirements
of a civilized order, in discharging that responsibility, there
hangs over them the reviewing power of this Court. [
Footnote 1] Power of such delicacy and import
must, of course, be exercised with the greatest forbearance. When,
however, appeal is made to it, there is no escape. And so this
Court once again must meet the uncongenial duty of testing the
validity of a conviction by a State court for a State crime by what
is to be found in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment. This case is here because the Supreme Court of Indiana
rejected petitioner's claim that confessions elicited from him were
procured under circumstances rendering their admission as evidence
against him a denial of due process of law. [
Footnote 2] 226 Ind. 655, 82 N.E.2d 846. The
grounds on which our review was sought seemed sufficiently weighty
to grant the petition for certiorari. 336 U.S. 917.
On review here of State convictions, all those matters which are
usually termed issues of fact are for conclusive determination by
the State courts and are not open for reconsideration by this
Court. Observance of this restriction
Page 338 U. S. 51
in our review of State courts calls for the utmost scruple. But
"issue of fact" is a coat of many colors. It does not cover a
conclusion drawn from uncontroverted happenings, when that
conclusion incorporates standards of conduct or criteria for
judgment which in themselves are decisive of constitutional rights.
Such standards and criteria, measured against the requirements
drawn from constitutional provisions, and their proper
applications, are issues for this Court's adjudication.
Hooven
& Allison Co. v. Evatt, 324 U. S. 652,
324 U. S. 659,
and cases cited. Especially in cases arising under the Due Process
Clause is it important to distinguish between issues of fact that
are here foreclosed and issues which, though cast in the form of
determinations of fact, are the very issues to review which this
Court sits.
See Norris v. Alabama, 294 U.
S. 587,
294 U. S.
589-590;
Marsh v. Alabama, 326 U.
S. 501,
326 U. S.
510.
In the application of so embracing a constitutional concept as
"due process," it would be idle to expect at all times unanimity of
views. Nevertheless, in all the cases that have come here during
the last decade from the courts of the various States in which it
was claimed that the admission of coerced confessions vitiated
convictions for murder, [
Footnote
3] there has been complete agreement that any
Page 338 U. S. 52
conflict in testimony as to what actually led to a contested
confession is not this Court's concern. Such conflict comes here
authoritatively resolved by the State's adjudication. Therefore,
only those elements of the events and circumstances in which a
confession was involved that are unquestioned in the State's
version of what happened are relevant to the constitutional issue
here. But if force has been applied, this Court does not leave to
local determination whether or not the confession was voluntary.
There is torture of mind as well as body; the will is as much
affected by fear as by force. And there comes a point where this
Court should not be ignorant as judges of what we know as men.
See Taft, C.J., in the
Child Labor Tax Case,
259 U. S. 20,
259 U. S.
37.
This brings us to the undisputed circumstances which must
determine the issue of due process in this case. Thanks to the
forthrightness of counsel for Indiana, these circumstances may be
briefly stated.
On November 12, 1947, a Wednesday, petitioner was arrested and
held as the suspected perpetrator of an alleged criminal assault
earlier in the day. Later the same day, in the vicinity of this
occurrence, a woman was found dead under conditions suggesting
murder in the course of an attempted criminal assault. Suspicion of
murder quickly turned towards petitioner, and the police began to
question him. They took him from the county jail to State Police
Headquarters, where he was questioned by officers in relays from
about eleven thirty that night until sometime between 2:30 and 3
o'clock the following morning. The same procedure of persistent
interrogation from about 5:30 in the afternoon until about 3
o'clock the following morning, by a relay of six to eight officers,
was pursued on Thursday, the 13th, Friday the 14th, Saturday the
15th, Monday the 17th. Sunday was a day of rest from interrogation.
About 3 o'clock on Tuesday morning, November 18, the petitioner
made an incriminating statement after continuous
Page 338 U. S. 53
questioning since 6 o'clock of the preceding evening. The
statement did not satisfy the prosecutor who had been called in,
and he then took petitioner in hand. Petitioner, questioned by an
interrogator of twenty years' experience as lawyer, judge and
prosecutor, yielded a more incriminating document.
Until his inculpatory statements were secured, the petitioner
was a prisoner in the exclusive control of the prosecuting
authorities. He was kept for the first two days in solitary
confinement in a cell aptly enough called "the hole" in view of its
physical conditions as described by the State's witnesses. Apart
from the five night sessions, the police intermittently
interrogated Watts during the day, and, on three days, drove him
around town, hours at a time, with a view to eliciting
identifications and other disclosures. Although the law of Indiana
required that petitioner be given a prompt preliminary hearing
before a magistrate, with all the protection a hearing was intended
to give him, the petitioner was not only given no hearing during
the entire period of interrogation, but was without friendly or
professional aid and without advice as to his constitutional
rights. Disregard of rudimentary needs of life -- opportunities for
sleep and a decent allowance of food -- are also relevant, not as
aggravating elements of petitioner's treatment, but as part of the
total situation out of which his confessions came and which stamped
their character.
A confession by which life becomes forfeit must be the
expression of free choice. A statement, to be voluntary, of course
need not be volunteered. But if it is the product of sustained
pressure by the police, it does not issue from a free choice. When
a suspect speaks because he is overborne, it is immaterial whether
he has been subjected to a physical or a mental ordeal. Eventual
yielding to questioning under such circumstances is plainly the
product of the suction process of interrogation, and therefore the
reverse of voluntary. We would
Page 338 U. S. 54
have to shut our minds to the plain significance of what here
transpired to deny that this was a calculated endeavor to secure a
confession through the pressure of unrelenting interrogation. The
very relentlessness of such interrogation implies that it is better
for the prisoner to answer than to persist in the refusal of
disclosure, which is his constitutional right. To turn the
detention of an accused into a process of wrenching from him
evidence which could not be extorted in open court, with all its
safeguards, is so grave an abuse of the power of arrest as to
offend the procedural standards of due process.
This is so because it violates the underlying principle in our
enforcement of the criminal law. Ours is the accusatorial, as
opposed to the inquisitorial, system. Such has been the
characteristic of Anglo-American criminal justice since it freed
itself from practices borrowed by the Star Chamber from the
Continent whereby an accused was interrogated in secret for hours
on end.
See Ploscowe, The Development of Present-Day
Criminal Procedures in Europe and America, 48 Harv.L.Rev., 433,
457-58, 467-473 (1935). Under our system, society carries the
burden of proving its charge against the accused not out of his own
mouth. It must establish its case not by interrogation of the
accused, even under judicial safeguards, but by evidence
independently secured through skillful investigation. "The law will
not suffer a prisoner to be made the deluded instrument of his own
conviction." 2 Hawkins, Pleas of the Crown c. 46, ยง 34 (8th ed.,
1824). The requirement of specific charges, their proof beyond a
reasonable doubt, the protection of the accused from confessions
extorted through whatever form of police pressures, the right to a
prompt hearing before a magistrate, the right to assistance of
counsel, to be supplied by government when circumstances make it
necessary, the duty to advise an accused of his constitutional
rights -- these are all characteristics of the accusatorial system
and manifestations of its demands.
Page 338 U. S. 55
Protracted, systematic and uncontrolled subjection of an accused
to interrogation by the police for the purpose of eliciting
disclosures or confessions is subversive of the accusatorial
system. It is the inquisitorial system without its safeguards. For
while, under that system, the accused is subjected to judicial
interrogation, he is protected by the disinterestedness of the
judge in the presence of counsel.
See Keedy, The
Preliminary Investigation of Crime in France, 88 U. of Pa.L.Rev.,
692, 708-712 (1940).
In holding that the Due Process Clause bars police procedure
which violates the basic notions of our accusatorial mode of
prosecuting crime and vitiates a conviction based on the fruits of
such procedure, we apply the Due Process Clause to its historic
function of assuring appropriate procedure before liberty is
curtailed or life is taken. We are deeply mindful of the anguishing
problems which the incidence of crime presents to the States. But
the history of the criminal law proves overwhelmingly that brutal
methods of law enforcement are essentially self-defeating, whatever
may be their effect in a particular case.
See, e.g.,
Radzinowicz, A History of English Criminal Law and its
Administration from 1750,
passim (1948). Law triumphs when
the natural impulses aroused by a shocking crime yield to the
safeguards which our civilization has evolved for an administration
of criminal justice at once rational and effective.
We have examined petitioner's other contentions, and do not
sustain them.
Reversed
MR. JUSTICE BLACK concurs in the judgment of the Court on the
authority of
Chambers v. Florida, 309 U.
S. 227;
Ashcraft v. Tennessee, 322 U.
S. 143.
On the records before us and in view of the consideration given
to the evidence by the state courts and the conclusion
Page 338 U. S. 56
reached, THE CHIEF JUSTICE, MR. JUSTICE REED and MR. JUSTICE
BURTON believe that the judgments should be affirmed in all three
cases.
[
Footnote 1]
Of course, this Court does not have the corrective power over
State courts that it has over the lower federal courts.
See,
e.g., McNabb v. United States, 318 U.
S. 332. In the main, the proper administration of the
criminal law of the States rests with the State courts. The nature
of the Due Process Clause, however, potentially gives wide range to
the reviewing power of this Court over State court convictions.
[
Footnote 2]
In the petitioner's statements, there was acknowledgment of the
possession of an incriminating gun, the existence of which the
police independently established. But a coerced confession is
inadmissible under the Due Process Clause even though statements in
it may be independently established as true.
See Lisenba v.
California, 314 U. S. 219,
314 U. S.
236-237.
[
Footnote 3]
The validity of a conviction because an allegedly coerced
confession was used has been called into question in the following
cases:
(A) Confession was found to be procured under circumstances
violative of the Due Process Clause in
Haley v. Ohio,
332 U. S. 596;
Malinski v. New York, 324 U. S. 401;
Ashcraft v. Tennessee, 322 U. S. 143;
Ward v. Texas, 316 U. S. 547;
Lomax v. Texas, 313 U.S. 544;
Vernon v. Alabama,
313 U.S. 547;
White v. Texas, 310 U.
S. 530;
Canty v. Alabama, 309 U.S. 629;
White v. Texas, 309 U.S. 631;
Chambers v.
Florida, 309 U. S. 227;
Brown v. Mississippi, 297 U. S. 278;
and see Ashcraft v. Tennessee, 327 U.
S. 274.
(B) Confession was found to have been procured under
circumstances not violative of the Due Process Clause in
Lyons
v. Oklahoma, 322 U. S. 596, and
Lisenba v. California, 314 U. S. 219.
MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS, concurring.
The following are the undisputed facts:
Petitioner was taken into custody early in the afternoon on
Wednesday, November 12, 1947. He was first detained on suspicion of
having committed a criminal assault, and it was not until later in
the day of his arrest that he was suspected of having committed the
murder for which he was later tried and convicted. He was held
without being arraigned until the following Tuesday, when he gave a
confession that satisfied the police. At no time was he advised of
his right to remain silent, nor did he have the advice of family,
friends or counsel during his confinement. He was not promptly
arraigned, as Indiana law requires.
During this confinement, petitioner was held in the county jail.
The first two days, he was placed in solitary confinement in a cell
known among the prisoners as "the hole." There was no place on
which to sit or sleep except the floor. Throughout this six-day
confinement, petitioner was subjected each day, except Sunday, to
long periods of interrogation. He was moved to the State Police
Headquarters for these questionings. The question period would
usually begin about six o'clock in the evening, except for the
first night, when it began about eleven thirty. Each question
period would extend to two or three o'clock the following morning.
These interrogations were conducted by relays of small groups of
officers. On several occasions, petitioner was given lie detector
tests. Following the evening's interrogation, he would be returned
to the county jail. Even then, he was not always given respite
until the next evening's ordeal commenced. He was subjected to
intermittent
Page 338 U. S. 57
questioning during the day, and on three afternoons he was
driven about the town for several hours by the police in an attempt
to elicit further information and to reconstruct petitioner's
activities the day of the crime.
It was about two or three o'clock Tuesday morning, after about
seven hours' interrogation, that petitioner gave the confession
used against him over objection at his trial. This was after six
days of confinement.
It would be naive to think that this protective custody was less
than the inquisition. The man was held until he broke. Then and
only then was he arraigned and given the protection which the law
provides all accused. Detention without arraignment is a
time-honored method for keeping an accused under the exclusive
control of the police. They can then operate at their leisure. The
accused is wholly at their mercy. He is without the aid of counsel
or friends, and he is denied the protection of the magistrate. We
should unequivocally condemn the procedure, and stand ready to
outlaw, as we did in
Malinski v. New York, 324 U.
S. 401, and
Haley v. Ohio, 332 U.
S. 596, any confession obtained during the period of the
unlawful detention. The procedure breeds coerced confessions. It is
the root of the evil. It is the procedure without which the
inquisition could not flourish in the country.
MR. JUSTICE JACKSON concurring in the result in No. 610 and
dissenting in Nos. 76 and 107.
*
These three cases, from widely separated states, present
essentially the same problem. Its recurrence suggests that it has
roots in some condition fundamental and general to our criminal
system.
Page 338 U. S. 58
In each case, police were confronted with one or more brutal
murders which the authorities were under the highest duty to solve.
Each of these murders was unwitnessed, and the only positive
knowledge on which a solution could be based was possessed by the
killer. In each, there was reasonable ground to suspect an
individual, but not enough legal evidence to charge him with guilt.
In each, the police attempted to meet the situation by taking the
suspect into custody and interrogating him. This extended over
varying periods. In each, confessions were made and received in
evidence at the trial. Checked with external evidence, they are
inherently believable, and were not shaken as to truth by anything
that occurred at the trial. Each confessor was convicted by a jury,
and state courts affirmed. This Court sets all three convictions
aside.
The seriousness of the Court's judgment is that no one suggests
that any course held promise of solution of these murders other
than to take the suspect into custody for questioning. The
alternative was to close the books on the crime and forget it, with
the suspect at large. This is a grave choice for a society in which
two-thirds of the murders already are closed out as insoluble.
A concurring opinion, however, goes to the very limit and seems
to declare for outlawing any confession, however freely given, if
obtained during a period of custody between arrest and arraignment
-- which, in practice, means all of them.
Others would strike down these confessions because of conditions
which they say make them "involuntary." In this, on only a printed
record, they pit their judgment against that of the trial judge and
the jury. Both, with the great advantage of hearing and seeing the
confessor and also the officers whose conduct and bearing toward
him is in question, have found that the confessions were voluntary.
In addition, the majority overrule in each
Page 338 U. S. 59
case one or more state appellate courts, which have the same
limited opportunity to know the truth that we do.
Amid much that is irrelevant or trivial, one serious situation
seems to me to stand out in these cases. The suspect neither had
nor was advised of his right to get counsel. This presents a real
dilemma in a free society. To subject one without counsel to
questioning which may and is intended to convict him, is a real
peril to individual freedom. To bring in a lawyer means a real
peril to solution of the crime because, under our adversary system,
he deems that his sole duty is to protect his client -- guilty or
innocent -- and that, in such a capacity, he owes no duty whatever
to help society solve its crime problem. Under this conception of
criminal procedure, any lawyer worth his salt will tell the suspect
in no uncertain terms to make no statement to police under any
circumstances.
If the State may arrest on suspicion and interrogate without
counsel, there is no denying the fact that it largely negates the
benefits of the constitutional guaranty of the right to assistance
of counsel. Any lawyer who has ever been called into a case after
his client has "told all" and turned any evidence he has over to
the Government knows how helpless he is to protect his client
against the facts thus disclosed.
I suppose the view one takes will turn on what one thinks should
be the right of an accused person against the State. Is it his
right to have the judgment on the facts? Or is it his right to have
a judgment based on only such evidence as he cannot conceal from
the authorities, who cannot compel him to testify in court and also
cannot question him before? Our system comes close to the latter by
any interpretation, for the defendant is shielded by such
safeguards as no system to law except the Anglo-American concedes
to him.
Of course, no confession that has been obtained by any form of
physical violence to the person is reliable, and
Page 338 U. S. 60
hence no conviction should rest upon one obtained in that
manner. Such treatment not only breaks the will to conceal or lie,
but may even break the will to stand by the truth. Nor is it
questioned that the same result can sometimes be achieved by
threats, promises, or inducements, which torture the mind but put
no scar on the body. If the opinion of Mr. Justice Frankfurter in
the
Watts case were based solely on the State's admissions
as to the treatment of Watts, I should not disagree. But if
ultimate quest in a criminal trial is the truth and if the
circumstances indicate no violence or threats of it, should society
be deprived of the suspect's help in solving a crime merely because
he was confined and questioned when uncounseled?
We must not overlook that, in these as in some previous cases,
once a confession is obtained, it supplies ways of verifying its
trustworthiness. In these cases before us, the verification is
sufficient to leave me in no doubt that the admissions of guilt
were genuine and truthful. Such corroboration consists in one case
of finding a weapon where the accused has said he hid it, and in
others that conditions which could only have been known to one who
was implicated correspond with his story. It is possible, but it is
rare, that a confession, if repudiated on the trial, standing
alone, will convict unless there is external proof of its
verity.
In all such cases, along with other conditions criticized, the
continuity and duration of the questioning is invoked, and it is
called an "inquiry", "inquest" or "inquisition," depending mainly
on the emotional state of the writer. But, as in some of the cases
here, if interrogation is permissible at all, there are sound
reasons for prolonging it -- which the opinions here ignore. The
suspect at first perhaps makes an effort to exculpate himself by
alibis or other statements. These are verified, found false, and he
is then confronted with his falsehood. Sometimes
Page 338 U. S. 61
(though such cases do not reach us) verification proves them
true or credible, and the suspect is released. Sometimes, as here,
more than one crime is involved. The duration of an interrogation
may well depend on the temperament, shrewdness and cunning of the
accused and the competence of the examiner. But assuming a right to
examine at all, the right must include what is made reasonably
necessary by the facts of the particular case.
If the right of interrogation be admitted, then it seems to me
that we must leave it to trial judges and juries and state
appellate courts to decide individual cases, unless they show some
want of proper standards of decision. I find nothing to indicate
that any of the courts below in these cases did not have a correct
understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment, unless this Court thinks
it means absolute prohibition of interrogation while in custody
before arraignment.
I suppose no one would doubt that our Constitution and Bill of
Rights, grounded in revolt against the arbitrary measures of George
III and in the philosophy of the French Revolution, represent the
maximum restrictions upon the power of organized society over the
individual that are compatible with the maintenance of organized
society itself. They were so intended, and should be so
interpreted. It cannot be denied that, even if construed as these
provisions traditionally have been, they contain an aggregate of
restrictions which seriously limit the power of society to solve
such crimes as confront us in these cases. Those restrictions we
should not for that reason cast aside, but that is good reason for
indulging in no unnecessary expansion of them.
I doubt very much if they require us to hold that the State may
not take into custody and question one suspected reasonably of an
unwitnessed murder. If it does, the people of this country must
discipline themselves to seeing their police stand by helplessly
while those suspected
Page 338 U. S. 62
of murder prowl about unmolested. Is it a necessary price to pay
for the fairness which we know as "due process of law"? And if not
a necessary one, should it be demanded by this Court? I do not know
the ultimate answer to these questions, but, for the present, I
should not increase the handicap on society.
* [For other opinions in No. 76,
Harris v. South
Carolina, and No. 107,
Turner v. Pennsylvania, see
post, pp.
388 U. S. 68,
388 U. S.
62.]