The Right to Counsel
Whatever previously may have been recognized as const.i.tuting the elements of procedural due process in criminal cases, it was not until 1932[816] that the Supreme Court acknowledged that the right "to have the a.s.sistance of counsel for * * * [one"s] defense," guaranteed as against the National Government by the Sixth Amendment, was of such fundamental character as to be embodied in the concept of due process of law as set forth in the Fourteenth Amendment. Later in 1937, it effected this incorporation by way of expansion of the term, "liberty," rather than, "due process," and conceded that the right to counsel was "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty."[817]
For want of adequate enjoyment of the right to counsel, the Court, in Powell _v._ Alabama,[818] overturned the conviction of Negroes who had received sentences of death for rape, and a.s.serted that, at least in capital cases, where the defendant is unable to employ counsel and is incapable adequately of making his own defense because of ignorance, illiteracy, or the like, it is the duty of the court, whether requested or not, to a.s.sign counsel for him as a necessary requisite of due process of Law. The duty is not discharged by an a.s.signment at such time or under such circ.u.mstances as to preclude the giving of effective aid in preparation and trial of the case. Under certain circ.u.mstances (e.g., ignorance and illiteracy of defendants, their youth, public hostility, imprisonment and close surveillance by military forces, fact that friends and families are in other States, and that they stand in deadly peril of their lives), the necessity of counsel is so vital and imperative that the failure of a trial court to make an effective appointment of counsel is a denial of due process of law.[819]
By its explicit refusal in Powell _v._ Alabama to consider whether denial of counsel in criminal prosecutions for less than capital offenses or under other circ.u.mstances[820] was equally violative of the due process clause, the Court left undefined the measure of the protection available to defendants; and its first two pertinent decisions rendered thereafter, contributed virtually nothing to correct that deficiency. In Avery _v._ Alabama,[821] a State trial court was sustained in its refusal to continue a murder case upon request of defense counsel appointed by said court only three days before the trial, who contended that they had not had sufficient time to prepare a defense, and in its subsequent rejection of a motion for a new trial which was grounded in part on the contention that the denial of the continuance was a deprivation of the prisoner"s rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. Apart from an admission that "where denial of the const.i.tutional right to a.s.sistance of counsel is a.s.serted, its peculiar sacredness demands that we scrupulously review the record," a unanimous Court proffered only the following vague appraisal of the application of the Fourteenth Amendment: "In determining whether pet.i.tioner has been denied his const.i.tutional right * * *, we must remember that the Fourteenth Amendment does not limit the power of the States to try and deal with crimes committed within their borders, and was not intended to bring to the test of a decision of this Court every ruling made in the course of a State trial. Consistently with the preservation of const.i.tutional balance between State and federal sovereignty, this Court must respect and is reluctant to interfere with the States"
determination of local social policy."[822] One year later, the Court made another inconclusive observation in Smith _v._ O"Grady,[823] in which it stated that if true, allegations in a pet.i.tion for _habeas corpus_ showing that the pet.i.tioner, although an uneducated man and without prior experience in court, was tricked into pleading guilty to a serious crime of burglary, and was tried without the requested aid of counsel would void the judgment under which he was imprisoned.
Conceding that the above mentioned opinions "lend color to the argument," though they did not actually so rule, that "in every case, whatever the circ.u.mstances, one charged with crime, who is unable to obtain counsel, must be furnished counsel by the State," the Court, in Betts _v._ Brady,[824] decided in 1942, not only narrowed the scope of the right of the accused to the "a.s.sistance of counsel," but also set at rest any question as to the const.i.tutional source from which the right was derived. Offering State courts the following vague guide for determining when provision of counsel is const.i.tutionally required, the Court declared that "the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits the conviction and incarceration of one whose trial is offensive to the common and fundamental ideas of fairness and right, and while want of counsel in a particular case may result in a conviction lacking in such fundamental fairness, we cannot say that the amendment embodies an inexorable command that no trial for any offense, or in any court, can be fairly conducted and justice accorded a defendant who is not represented by counsel * * * a.s.serted denial of due process is to be tested by an appraisal of the totality of facts in a given case. That which may, in one setting, const.i.tute a denial of fundamental fairness, shocking to the universal sense of justice, may, in other circ.u.mstances, and in the light of other considerations, fall short of such denial."[825]
Accordingly, an indigent farm laborer was deemed not to have been denied due process of law when he was convicted of robbery by a Maryland county court, sitting without a jury, which was not required by statute[826] to honor his request for counsel and whose "practice," in fact was to afford counsel only in murder and rape cases. Finally, the Court emphatically rejected the notion, suggested, however faintly by the older decisions, that the Fourteenth Amendment "incorporates the specific guarantees found in the Sixth Amendment, although it recognized that a denial of the rights stipulated in the latter Amendment may in a given case amount to a deprivation of due process."[827]
Having thus construed the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as not inclusive of the Sixth Amendment and as requiring no more than a fair trial which, on occasion, may necessitate the protection of counsel, the Court, in succeeding decisions rendered during the interval, 1942-1946, proceeded to subject Betts _v._ Brady to the "silent treatment." In Williams _v._ Kaiser[828] and Tomkins _v._ Missouri[829] two defendants pleaded guilty without counsel to the commission in Missouri of capital offenses, one, to robbery with a deadly weapon, and the second, to murder. Defendant, Williams contended that, notwithstanding his request, the trial court did not appoint counsel, whereas defendant, Tomkins alleged that he was ignorant of his right to demand counsel under the Missouri statute. In ruling that the defendants" pet.i.tions for _habeas corpus_ should not have been rejected by Missouri courts without a hearing, the Supreme Court relied almost entirely upon the quotations from Powell _v._ Alabama[830] previously set forth herein; and reiterated that the right to counsel in felony cases being protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, the failure of a State court to appoint counsel is a denial of due process. "A layman,"
the Court added, "is usually no match for the skilled prosecutor whom he confronts in the court room. He needs the aid of counsel lest he be the victim of overzealous prosecutors, of the law"s complexity, or of his own ignorance or bewilderment."[831]
Nor was Betts _v._ Brady mentioned in the following pertinent decisions.
In House _v._ Mayo,[832] the Supreme Court held that the action of a trial court in compelling a defendant to plead to an information charging burglary without opportunity to consult with his counsel is a denial of the const.i.tutional right to counsel; and in Hawk _v._ Olson[833] the Court repeated this a.s.sertion, in connection with the denial to a defendant accused of a murder of the same opportunity during the critical period between his arraignment and the impaneling of the jury. Both these opinions cited with approval the two previously discussed Williams and Tomkins Cases; and in House _v._ Mayo the Court declared without any explanation: "Compare Betts _v._ Brady with Williams _v._ Kaiser and Tomkins _v._ Missouri."[834] A similar performance by the Court is also discernible in Rice _v._ Olson,[835] in which it ruled that a defendant, who pleads guilty to a charge of burglary, is incapable adequately of making his own defense, and does not understandingly waive counsel; he is ent.i.tled to the benefit of legal aid, and a request therefor is not necessary. Also, on the basis of unchallenged facts contradicting a prisoner"s allegation that he had been denied counsel; namely, that after his arraignment and plea of guilty to a charge of robbery, counsel had noted an appearance for him two days before the date of sentencing and had actively intervened in his behalf on the latter date, a majority of the Court, in Canizio _v._ New York,[836] ruled that the right to counsel had not been withheld.
Without mentioning Betts _v._ Brady by name, the Court, in 1946, returned to the fair trial principle enunciated therein when it held that no deprivation of the const.i.tutional right to the aid of counsel was disclosed by the record in Carter _v._ Illinois.[837] That record included only the indictment, the judgment on the plea of guilty to a charge of murder, the minute entry bearing on the sentence, and the sentence, together with a lengthy recital in the judgment to the effect that when the defendant expressed a desire to plead guilty the Court explained to him the consequence of such plea, his rights in the premises, especially, his rights to have a lawyer appointed to defend him and to be tried before a jury, and the degree of proof required for an acquittal under a not guilty plea, but that the defendant persisted in his plea of guilty. Emphasizing that this record was entirely wanting in facts bearing upon the maturity or capacity of comprehension of the prisoner, or upon the circ.u.mstances under which the plea of guilty was tendered and accepted, the Supreme Court concluded that no inference of lack of understanding, or ability to make an intelligent waiver of counsel, could be drawn from the fact that the trial court did a.s.sign counsel when it came to sentencing.[838] Applying the same doctrine, and on this occasion at least citing Betts _v._ Brady, the Court, in De Meerleer _v._ Michigan,[839] unanimously declared that the arraignment, trial, conviction of murder, and sentence to life imprisonment, all on the same day, of a seventeen-year old boy who was without legal a.s.sistance, and was never advised of his right to counsel, who received from the trial court no explanation of the consequences of his plea of guilty, and who never subjected the State"s witnesses to cross-examination, effected a denial of const.i.tutional "rights essential to a fair hearing."
Even more conclusive evidence of the revival of the fair trial doctrine of Betts _v._ Brady is to be found in the majority opinions contained in Foster _v._ Illinois[840] and Gayes _v._ New York.[841] In the former the Court ruled that where it appears that the trial court, before accepting pleas of guilty to charges of burglary and larceny by defendants, aged 34 and 58 respectively, advised each of his rights of trial and of the consequences of such a plea, the fact that the record reveals no express offer of counsel would not suffice to show that the accused were deprived of rights essential to the fair hearing required by the due process clause. Reiterating that the absolute right to counsel accorded by the Sixth Amendment does not apply in prosecutions in State courts, five of the Justices declared that all the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment "exacts from the States is a conception of fundamental justice" which is neither "satisfied by merely formal procedural correctness, nor * * * confined by any absolute rule such as that which the Sixth Amendment contains in securing to an accused [in the federal courts] "the a.s.sistance of Counsel for his defense.""[842] On the same day, four Justices, with Justice Burton concurring only in the result, held in Gayes _v._ New York,[843] that one sentenced in 1941 as a second offender under a charge of burglary was not ent.i.tled to vacation of a judgment rendered against him in 1938, when charged with the first offense, on the ground that when answering in the negative the trial court"s inquiry as to whether he desired the aid of counsel, he did not understand his const.i.tutional rights. On his subsequent conviction in 1941, which took into account his earlier sentence of 1938, the defendant was deemed to have had full opportunity to contest the const.i.tutionality of his earlier sentence.
Consistently with these two cases, the Court in Marino _v._ Ragen,[844]
decided later in the same year, held that the absence of counsel, in conjunction with the following set of facts, operated to deprive a defendant of due process. In this latter decision, the accused, an 18-year-old Italian immigrant, unable to understand the English language, was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment on a plea of guilty when, notwithstanding a recital in the record that he was arraigned in open court and advised through interpreters, one of whom was the arresting officer, of the meaning and effect of a "guilty"
plea, and that he signed a statement waiving a jury trial and pleading guilty, the waiver was not in fact signed by him and no plea of guilty actually had been entered.
In disposing of more recent cases embracing right to counsel as an issue, the Court, either with or without citation of Betts _v._ Brady, has consistently applied the fair trial doctrine. Thus, the absence of counsel competent to advise a 15-year-old Negro boy of his rights was one of several factors operating in Haley _v._ Ohio[845] to negative the propriety of admitting in evidence a confession to murder and contributing to the conclusion that the boy"s conviction had resulted from proceedings that were unfair. Dividing again on the same issues in which they were in disagreement in Foster _v._ Illinois;[846] namely, the applicability of Amendment Six to State criminal prosecutions and the merits of the fair trial doctrine as expounded in Betts _v._ Brady, five Justices in Bute _v._ Illinois[847] ruled that the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment does not require a State court to tender a.s.sistance of counsel, before accepting a plea of guilty to a charge of indecent liberties with female children, the maximum penalty for which is 20 years, from a 57-year-old man who was not a lawyer and who received from the Court an explanation of the consequences and penalties resulting from such plea. Unanimity was subsequently regained in Wade _v._ Mayo[848] in which the Justices had before them the plight of an 18-year-old boy, convicted on the charge of breaking and entering, who was described by a federal district court as not a stranger in court, having been convicted of prior offenses, but as still unfamiliar with court procedure and not capable of representing himself adequately.
On the strength of these and other findings, the Supreme Court held that where one charged with crime is by reason of age, ignorance, or mental incapacity incapable of defending himself, even in a prosecution of a relatively simple nature, the refusal of a State trial court to appoint counsel at his request is a denial of due process, even though the law of the State does not require such appointment.
Dissents were again registered in the following brace of decision which a minority of the Justices declared their inability to reconcile. In the first, Gryger _v._ Burke,[849] the Court held that when one, sentenced to life imprisonment as a fourth offender under a State habitual criminal act, had been arrested eight times for crimes of violence, followed by pleas of guilty or conviction, and in two of such former trials had been represented by counsel, the State"s failure to offer or to provide counsel for him on his plea to a charge of being a fourth offender does not render his conviction and sentence as such invalid, even though the Court may have misconstrued the statute as making a life sentence mandatory rather than discretionary. Emphasizing that there were "no exceptional circ.u.mstances * * * present," the majority a.s.serted that "it rather overstrains our credulity to believe that [such a defendant would be ignorant] of his right [to request and] to engage counsel." In the second, Townsend _v._ Burke,[850] the Supreme Court declared that although failure of a State court to offer or to a.s.sign counsel to one charged with the noncapital offenses of burglary and robbery, or to advise him of his right to counsel before accepting a plea of guilty may not render his conviction invalid for lack of due process, the requirement is violated when, while disadvantaged by lack of counsel who might have corrected the court"s errors, defendant is sentenced on the basis of materially untrue a.s.sumptions concerning his criminal record.[851]
Concordant as to the results reached, if not always as to the reasoning supporting them, are the Court"s latest rulings. In Uveges _v._ Pennsylvania,[852] it was held that inasmuch as the record showed that a State court did not attempt to make a 17-year-old youth understand the consequences of his plea of guilty to four separate indictments charging burglary, for which he could be given sentences aggregating 80 years, and that the youth was neither advised of his right to counsel nor offered counsel at any time between arrest and conviction, due process was denied him. Likewise, in Gibbs _v._ Burke[853] was overturned, as contrary to due process, the conviction for larceny of a man in his thirties who conducted his own defense, having neither requested, nor having been offered counsel. On the authority of the Uveges Case, accused"s failure to request counsel, since it could be attributed to ignorance of his right thereto, was held not to const.i.tute a waiver. Moreover, had the accused been granted the protection of counsel, the latter might have been able to prevent certain prejudicial rulings; namely, the introduction without objection of considerable hearsay testimony, the error of the trial judge in converting a prosecution witness into a defense witness, and finally, the injection of biased statements into the judge"s comments to the jury. And of the same general pattern is the holding in Palmer _v._ Ashe,[854] another Pennsylvania case, involving a pet.i.tioner who alleged that, as a youth and former inmate at a mental inst.i.tution, he was railroaded into prison for armed robbery without benefit of counsel, on the representation that he was charged only with breaking and entering. Reversing the State court"s denial of pet.i.tioner"s application for a writ of habeas corpus, the Court remanded the case, a.s.serting that if pet.i.tioner"s allegations were proven, he was ent.i.tled to counsel. On the other hand, it was held in Quicksall _v._ Michigan,[855] a State in which capital punishment does not exist, that a defendant who had received a life sentence on a plea of guilty entered without benefit of counsel, had "failed to sustain the burden of proving such disregard of fundamental fairness * * * as alone would * * * invalidate his sentence," not having convinced the State court that he was ignorant of his right to counsel, or that he had requested same, or that the consequences of his plea had been misrepresented to him. Also, in Gallegos _v._ Nebraska,[856] in which the pet.i.tioner had been convicted of manslaughter on a homicide charge, a similar conclusion was reached in the face of the pet.i.tioner"s claim that the confession on the strength of which he was convicted had been obtained from him by mistreatment, prior to the a.s.signment of counsel to him. Said the Court: "The Federal Const.i.tution does not command a State to furnish defendants counsel as a matter of course.
* * * Lack of counsel at State noncapital trials denies federal const.i.tutional protection only when the absence results in a denial to accused of the essentials of justice."[857]
By way of summation, the Court in Uveges _v._ Pennsylvania[858] offered the following comment on the conflicting views advanced by its members on this issue of right to counsel. "Some members [minority] of the Court think that where serious offenses are charged, failure of a court to offer counsel in State criminal trials deprives an accused of rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. They are convinced that the services of counsel to protect the accused are guaranteed by the Const.i.tution in every such instance. _See_ Bute _v._ Illinois, 333 U.S. 640, dissent, 677-679. Only when the accused refuses counsel with an understanding of his rights can the Court dispense with counsel.[859] Others of us [majority] think that when a crime subject to capital punishment is not involved, each case depends on its own facts. _See_ Betts _v._ Brady, 316 U.S. 455, 462. Where the gravity of the crime and other factors--such as the age and education of the defendant,[860] the conduct of the court or the prosecuting officials,[861] and the complicated nature of the offense charged and the possible defenses thereto[862]--render criminal proceedings without counsel so apt to result in injustice as to be fundamentally unfair, the latter group [majority] holds that the accused must have legal a.s.sistance under the amendment whether he pleads guilty or elects to stand trial, whether he requests counsel or not. Only a waiver of counsel, understandingly made, justifies trial without counsel. The philosophy behind both of these views is that the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment * * *
requires counsel for all persons charged with serious crimes, when necessary for their adequate defense, in order that such persons may be advised how to conduct their trials. The application of the rule varies * * *" It would appear nevertheless that the statement quoted in the previous paragraph from the Gallegos Case weakens this doctrine somewhat. Nor is the Court"s reply to the contention that such variation in application "leaves the State prosecuting authorities uncertain as to whether to offer counsel to all accused who are without adequate funds and under serious charges," very rea.s.suring: "We cannot offer a panacea for the difficulty. * * * The due process clause is not susceptible of reduction to a mathematical formula."[863]
Right to Trial by Jury
The contention that a right to trial by a common law jury of twelve men in criminal cases was guaranteed by Amendment XIV was first rejected in Maxwell _v._ Dow[864] on the basis of Hurtado _v._ California,[865]
where it was denied that the due process clause itself incorporated all the rules of procedural protection having their origin in English legal history. Accordingly, so long as all persons are made liable to be proceeded against in the same manner, a state statute dispensing with unanimity,[866] or providing for a jury of eight instead of twelve, in noncapital criminal cases[867] is not unconst.i.tutional; nor is one eliminating employment of a jury when the defendant pleads guilty to no less than a capital offense;[868] or permitting a defendant generally to waive trial by jury.[869] In short, jury trials are no longer viewed as essential to due process, even in criminal cases, and may be abolished altogether.[870]
Inasmuch as "the purpose of criminal procedure is not to enable the defendant to select jurors, but to secure an impartial jury," a trial of a murder charge by a "struck" jury, chosen in conformity with a statute providing that the court may select from the persons qualified to serve as jurors 96 names, from which the prosecutor and defendant may each strike 24, and that the remainder of which shall be put in the jury box, out of which the trial jury shall be drawn in the usual way, is not violative of due process. Such a method "is certainly a fair and reasonable way of securing an impartial jury," which is all that the defendant const.i.tutionally may demand.[871] Likewise, the right to challenge being the right to reject, not to select, a juror, a defendant who is subjected at a single trial to two indictments, each charging murder, cannot complain when the State limits the number of his peremptory challenges to ten on each indictment instead of the twenty customarily allowed at a trial founded upon a single indictment.[872]
Also, a defendant who has been convicted by a special, or "blue ribbon,"
jury cannot validly contend that he was thereby denied due process of law.[873] In ruling that the defendant had failed to sustain his contention that such a jury was defective as to its composition, the Court conceded that "a system of exclusions could be so manipulated as to call a jury before which defendants would have so little chance of a decision on the evidence that it would const.i.tute a denial of due process" and would result in a trial which was a "sham or pretense." A defendant is deemed ent.i.tled, however, to no more than "a neutral jury"
and "has no const.i.tutional right to friends on the jury."[874] In fact, the due process clause does not prohibit a State from excluding from the jury certain occupational groups such as lawyers, preachers, doctors, dentists, and enginemen and firemen of railroad trains. Such exclusions may be justified on the ground that the continued attention to duty by members of such occupations is beneficial to the community.[875]
Self-Incrimination--Forced Confessions
In 1908, in Twining _v._ New Jersey,[876] the Court ruled that neither the historical meaning nor the current definition of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment included protection against self-incrimination, which was viewed as unworthy of being rated "an immutable principle of justice" or as a "fundamental right." The Fifth Amendment embodying this privilege was held to operate to restrain only the Federal Government; whereas the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was deemed to permit a State even to go so far as to subst.i.tute the criminal procedure of the Civil Law, in which the privilege against self-incrimination is unknown, for that of the Common Law. Accordingly, New Jersey was within her rights in permitting a trial judge, in a criminal proceeding, to instruct a jury that they might draw an unfavorable inference from the failure of a defendant to comment on the prosecutor"s evidence.
Apart from a recent ineffectual effort of a minority of the Justices to challenge the interpretation thus placed upon the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court has yet to register any departure from its ruling in Twining _v._ New Jersey.[877] In two subsequent opinions the Court rea.s.serted _obiter_ that "the privilege against self-incrimination may be withdrawn and the accused put upon the stand as a witness for the State." No "principle of justice so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental"[878] is violated by abolition of such privilege; nor is its complete destruction likely to outrage students of our penal system, many of whom "look upon * * * [this] immunity as a mischief rather than a benefit, * * *"[879]
In subsequently disposing of similarly challenged State criminal proceedings, the Court has applied almost exclusively the Fair Trial doctrine. With only casual consideration of the intention of the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment, or of the rejected proposition that the due process clause thereof had imposed upon the States all the restraints which the Bill of Rights had imposed upon the Federal Government, the Court has simply endeavored to ascertain whether the accused enjoyed all the privileges essential to a fair trial. Thus, without even admitting that the privilege against self-incrimination was involved, all the Justices agreed, in Brown _v._ Mississippi,[880] that the use of a confession extorted by brutality and violence (undenied strangulation and whipping by the sheriff aided by a mob) was a denial of due process, even though coercion was not established until after the confession had been admitted in evidence and defense counsel did not thereafter move for its exclusion. Although compulsory processes of justice may be used to call the accused as a witness and to require him to testify, "compulsion by torture to extort a confession is a different matter.
* * * The rack and torture chamber may not be subst.i.tuted for the witness stand."[881] Again, in Chambers _v._ Florida[882] the Court, with no mention of the privilege against self-incrimination, proclaimed that due process is denied when convictions of murder are obtained in State courts by the use of confessions extorted under the following conditions: dragnet methods of arrest on suspicion without warrant and protracted questioning (on the last day, from noon until sunset) in a fourth floor jail where the prisoners were without friends or counselors, and under circ.u.mstances calculated to break the strongest nerves and stoutest resistance. Affirming that the Supreme Court is not concluded by the finding of a jury in a State court that a confession in a murder trial was voluntary, but determines that question for itself from the evidence, the Justices unanimously declared that the Const.i.tution proscribes lawless means irrespective of the end, and rejected the argument that the thumbscrew, the wheel, solitary confinement, protracted questioning, and other ingenious means of entrapment are necessary to uphold our laws.[883] Procuring a conviction for a capital crime by use of a confession extracted by protracted interrogation conducted in a similar manner was, on the authority of Chambers _v._ Florida, condemned in White _v._ Texas;[884] and in Lisenba _v._ California,[885] a case rendered inconclusive by conflicting testimony, the Court remarked, by way of dictum, that "the concept of due process would void a trial in which, by threats or promises in the presence of court and jury, a defendant was induced to testify against himself," or in which a confession is used which is "procured * * * by fraud, collusion, trickery and subornation or perjury."
In conformity with these rulings, the Court, in Ward _v._ Texas,[886]
set aside a conviction based upon a confession obtained, by methods of coercion and duress, from a defendant who had been arrested illegally, without warrant, by the sheriff of another county, and removed to a county more than a hundred miles away, and who for three days, while being driven from county to county, was questioned continuously by various officers and falsely informed by them of threats of mob violence. Similarly, in Ashcraft _v._ Tennessee,[887] the use in a State court of a confession obtained near the end of a 36-hour period of practically continuous questioning, under powerful electric lights, by relays of officers, experienced investigators, and highly trained lawyers was held to be violative of const.i.tutional right by reason of the inherently coercive character of such interrogation. Justice Jackson, joined by Justices Frankfurter and Roberts, dissented on the ground that the accused not only denied that the protracted questioning "had the effect of forcing an involuntary confession from him" but that he had ever confessed at all, a contention which reputable witnesses contradicted. Referring to Justice Holmes"s warning against "the ever increasing scope given to the Fourteenth Amendment in cutting down * * *
the const.i.tutional rights of the States."[888] Justice Jackson protested that "interrogation _per se_ is not, * * *, an outlaw"; and that inasmuch as all questioning is ""inherently coercive" * * *, the ultimate question * * * [must be] whether the confessor was in possession of his own will and self-control at the time of [his]
confession."[889]
This dissent was not without effect. In June 1944, in Lyons _v._ Oklahoma,[890] the Court finally handed down a ruling calculated definitely to arrest the suspicion that had been developing that the use of any confession made after arrest would render a trial const.i.tutionally defective. Here, six Justices refused to overturn a holding of the Oklahoma Criminal Court of Appeals which labelled as voluntary and usable a second confession obtained by other than coercive means within twelve hours after the defendant had made a confession admittedly under duress. The vice of coerced confessions, these Justices a.s.serted, was that they offended "basic standards of justice, not because the victim had a legal grievance against the police, but because declarations procured by torture are not premises from which a civilized forum will infer guilt."[891] In Malinski _v._ New York,[892] however, although in the opinion of four Justices there was conflicting evidence as to the involuntary character of the confessions used, the Court nevertheless overturned a conviction sustained by New York tribunals.[893] Without finding it necessary to determine whether succeeding oral and written confessions were the product of the coercion "admittedly" applied in extracting an initial oral confession,[894] the Court held that, even though other evidence might have sufficed to convict the accused and notwithstanding the fact that the initial oral confession was never put in evidence, the repeated indirect reference to its content at the trial plus the failure to warn the jury not to consider it as evidence[895] invalidated the proceeding giving rise to the verdict.[896]
Of the remaining cases involving the issue of self-incrimination, Adamson _v._ California[897] is especially significant because it represents the high water mark of dissent in support of the contention that the Bill of Rights, originally operative only against the Federal Government, became limitations on State action by virtue of their inclusion within the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Here, the Court, speaking through Justice Reed, declared that the California law which provides that if an accused elects to take the witness stand and testify, he must then be prepared to undergo impeachment of his testimony, through disclosure of his previous convictions, and which also permits him to avoid such disclosure by remaining silent, subject to comment on his failure to testify by the Court and prosecuting counsel, does not involve such a denial of due process as to invalidate a conviction in a State court. Inasmuch as California law "does not involve any presumption, reb.u.t.table or irreb.u.t.table, either of guilt or of the truth of any fact," and does not alter the burden of proof, which rests upon the State, nor the presumption of innocence in favor of the accused, it does not prevent the accused from enjoying a fair trial, which is all that the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees. Relying upon Twining _v._ New Jersey[898] and Palko _v._ Connecticut,[899] the Court reiterated that the "due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, however, does not draw all the rights of the federal Bill of Rights under its protection."[900]
In a concurring opinion concerning the scope of the protection afforded by this clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, Justice Frankfurter contended that further argument thereon is foreclosed by Twining _v._ New Jersey, a precedent, on which he commented as follows: "Decisions of this Court do not have equal intrinsic authority. The _Twining_ Case shows the judicial process at its best--comprehensive briefs and powerful arguments on both sides, followed by long deliberation, resulting in an opinion by Mr. Justice Moody which at once gained and has ever since retained recognition as one of the outstanding opinions in the history of the Court. After enjoying unquestioned prestige for forty years, the _Twining_ Case should not now be diluted, even unwittingly, either in its judicial philosophy or in its particulars. As the surest way of keeping the _Twining_ Case intact, I would affirm this case on its authority."
In dismissing as historically untenable the position adopted by Justice Black, Justice Frankfurter further declared that: "The notion that the Fourteenth Amendment was a covert way of imposing upon the States all the rules which it seemed important to Eighteenth Century statesmen to write into the Federal Amendments, was rejected by judges who were themselves witnesses of the process by which the Fourteenth Amendment became part of the Const.i.tution. Arguments that may now be adduced to prove that the first eight Amendments were concealed within the historic phrasing of the Fourteenth Amendment were not unknown at the time of its adoption. A surer estimate of their bearing was possible for judges at the time than distorting distance is likely to vouchsafe. Any evidence of design or purpose not contemporaneously known could hardly have influenced those who ratified the Amendment. Remarks of a particular proponent of the Amendment, no matter how influential, are not to be deemed part of the Amendment. What was submitted for ratification was his proposal, not his speech. * * * The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment has an independent potency, precisely as does the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment in relation to the Federal Government. It ought not to require argument to reject the notion that due process of law meant one thing in the Fifth Amendment and another in the Fourteenth. The Fifth Amendment specifically prohibits prosecution of an "infamous crime" except upon indictment; it forbids double jeopardy; it bars compelling a person to be a witness against himself in any criminal case; it precludes deprivation of "life, liberty, or property, without due process of law * * *" Are Madison and his contemporaries in the framing of the Bill of Rights to be charged with writing into it a meaningless clause? To consider "due process of law"
as merely a shorthand statement of other specific clauses in the same amendment is to attribute to the authors and proponents of this Amendment ignorance of, or indifference to, a historic conception which was one of the great instruments in the a.r.s.enal of const.i.tutional freedom which the Bill of Rights was to protect and strengthen." Warning that "a construction which * * * makes of" the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment "a summary of specific provisions of the Bill of Rights would, * * *, tear up by the roots much of the fabric of the law in the several States," Justice Frankfurter, in conclusion, offers his own appraisal of this clause. To him, the due process clause "expresses a demand for civilized standards of law, [and] it is thus not a stagnant formulation of what has been achieved in the past but a standard for judgment in the progressive evolution of the inst.i.tutions of a free society." Accordingly "judicial judgment in applying the Due Process Clause must move within the limits of accepted notions of justice and * * * [should] not be based upon the idiosyncrasies of a merely personal judgment. * * * An important safeguard against such merely individual judgment is an alert deference to the judgment of the State court under review."[901]
In dissenting Justice Black, who was supported by Justice Douglas, attached to his opinion "an appendix which contains * * * [his] resume, * * *, of the Amendment"s history." It is his judgment "that history conclusively demonstrates that the language of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment, taken as a whole, was thought by those responsible for its submission to the people, and by those who opposed its submission, sufficiently explicit to guarantee that thereafter no State could deprive its citizens of the privileges and protections of the Bill of Rights." A majority of the Court, he acknowledges resignedly, has declined, however, "to appraise the relevant historical evidence of the intended scope of the first section of the Amendment." In the instant case, the majority opinion, according to Justice Black, "rea.s.serts a const.i.tutional theory spelled out in Twining _v._ New Jersey, * * * that this Court is endowed by the Const.i.tution with boundless power under "natural law" periodically to expand and contract const.i.tutional standards to conform to the Court"s conception of what at a particular time const.i.tutes "civilized decency" and "fundamental liberty and justice." * * * [This] "natural law" formula, [he further contends]
* * * should be abandoned as an incongruous excrescence on our Const.i.tution. * * * [The] formula [is] itself a violation of our Const.i.tution, in that it subtly conveys to courts, at the expense of legislatures, ultimate power over public policies in fields where no specific provision of the Const.i.tution limits legislative power." In conclusion, Justice Black expresses his fears as to "the consequences of the Court"s practice of subst.i.tuting its own concepts of decency and fundamental justice for the language of the Bill of Rights * * *"[902]
In all but one of the remaining cases, the Court sided with the accused and supported his contention that the confession on which his conviction was based had been procured by methods contrary to the requirements of due process. The conviction of murder of a Negro boy of fifteen was reversed by five Justices in Haley _v._ Ohio[903] on the ground that his confession, which contributed to the verdict, was involuntary, having been obtained by the police after several hours of questioning immediately after the boy was arrested, during which interval the youth was without friends or legal counsel. After having had his confession reduced to writing, the boy continued to be held _incommunicado_ for three days before being arraigned. "The age of pet.i.tioner, the [midnight] hours when he was grilled, the duration of his quizzing, the fact that he had no friend or counsel to advise him, the callous att.i.tude of the police towards his rights combine to convince us," the Court declared, "that this was a confession wrung from a child by means which the law should not sanction."[904] The application of duress being indisputed, a unanimous Court, in Lee _v._ Mississippi,[905] citing as authority all the preceding cases beginning with Brown _v._ Mississippi, held that "a conviction resulting from such use of a coerced confession, however, is no less void because the accused testified at some point in the proceeding that he had never in fact confessed, voluntarily or involuntarily. * * *, inconsistent testimony as to the confession * * *
cannot preclude the accused from raising * * * the issue * * * [that]
the Fourteenth Amendment * * * [voids a] conviction grounded * * * upon a confession which is the product of other than reasoned and voluntary choice." In Taylor _v._ Alabama,[906] however, a majority of the Justices sustained the denial by a State appellate court, in which a conviction had been affirmed, of leave to file in a trial court a pet.i.tion for a writ of error _coram n.o.bis_ grounded upon the contention that confessions and admissions introduced into evidence at the trial had been obtained by coercion.[907] Five Justices declared that such denial was not such arbitrary action as in itself to amount to a deprivation of due process of law where the circ.u.mstances tended to show that the pet.i.tioner"s allegations of mistreatment, none of which were submitted during the trial or the appeal,[908] were highly improbable.[909]
Finally, in three decisions rendered on June 27, 1949, the Court reversed three convictions of murder on the ground that they had been founded entirely upon coerced confessions. The defendant in the first case, Watts _v._ Indiana,[910] was held without arraignment, without the aid of counsel or friends, and without advice as to his const.i.tutional rights from Wednesday until the following Friday, when he confessed.
During this interval, he was held much of the time in solitary confinement in a cell with no place to sit or sleep except the floor, and was subjected to interrogation daily, Sunday excepted, by relays of police officers for periods ranging in duration from three to nine and one-half hours. His incarceration without a prompt preliminary hearing also was a violation of Indiana law. Similarly in conflict with State law was the arrest without warrant and detention without arraignment for five days of the accused in Turner _v._ Pennsylvania,[911] the second case. During this period, Turner was not permitted to see friends, relatives, or counsel, was never informed of his right to remain silent, and was interrogated daily, though for briefer intervals than in the preceding case. At his trial, the prosecuting attorney "admitted that a hearing was withheld until interrogation had produced a confession." In the third and last case of this group, Harris _v._ South Carolina,[912]
the defendant, an illiterate Negro, was apprehended in Tennessee on a Friday on a warrant alleging no more than a theft of a pistol, and taken to South Carolina on a Sunday. Without being informed of the contents of the warrant or of the charge of murder on which he was being held, without arraignment or advice as to his rights and without access to family or counsel, the defendant was questioned daily by officers for periods as long as 12 hours. In addition, he was warned that his mother also might be arrested for handling stolen property.
In each of these cases there was dissent, and in none was the majority able to record its views in a single opinion. Justice Murphy and Justice Rutledge joined Justice Frankfurter, who filed a separate opinion in all three cases, in declaring that "a confession by which life becomes forfeit must be the expression of 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. * * * if * * * [his confession] is the product of sustained pressure by the police it does not issue from a free choice."[913] On the authority of Chambers _v._ Florida[914] and Ashcraft _v._ Tennessee,[915] Justice Black supported the judgments reached in all three cases; but Justice Douglas, in concurring, advocated the disposition of these cases in conformity with a broader rule; namely that, "any confession obtained during * * * [a]
period of * * * unlawful detention"; that is during a period of custody between arrest and arraignment, should be outlawed.[916] Justice Jackson, who wrote an opinion applicable to all three cases, concurred in the result in Watts _v._ Indiana, presumably on the basis of that part of Justice Frankfurter"s opinion therein which was founded "on the State"s admissions as to the treatment of Watts."[917] Emphasizing the merit of deferring to the findings of trial court and jury on the issue of the "voluntariness" of confessions on the ground that they have "the great advantage of hearing and seeing the confessor and also the officers whose conduct and bearing toward him is in question," Justice Jackson dissented in Turner _v._ Pennsylvania[918] and Harris _v._ South Carolina.[919] "If the right of interrogation be admitted," he declared, "then * * * 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."[920] Without explanatory opinion, Chief Justice Vinson and Justices Burton and Reed dissented in all three cases.
Unreasonable Searches and Seizures
In National Safe Deposit Co. _v._ Stead,[921] decided in 1914, the Court unequivocally declared that an unreasonable search and seizure committed by State and local officers presented no federal question, inasmuch as the Fourth Amendment does not apply to the States. Prior to that date, the Court has pa.s.sed upon this question obliquely in only a few decisions,[922] in one of which it conceded for the sake of argument, but without so deciding, that the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment embraces in its generic terms a prohibition against unreasonable searches. In two of these earlier cases the Court sustained as consistent with due process the power of a State, in investigating the conduct of corporations doing business within its limits, to demand the production of corporate books and papers. The call for such papers was deemed not to have been rendered unreasonable because, at the time of the demand therefor, the corporation affected either temporarily or permanently kept such doc.u.ments in another jurisdiction. Nor was the validity of the order to produce such materials viewed as having been impaired by the fact that it sought to elicit proof not only as to the liability of the corporation but also, evidence in its possession relevant to its defense.
In its most recent opportunity to review the question whether the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment precludes admission in a State court of relevant evidence obtained by an unreasonable search and seizure,[923] the Court apparently ruled in the negative; but Justice Frankfurter, speaking for the majority, did not limit himself to a repet.i.tion of the conclusions stated by him in Adamson _v._ California;[924] namely, that the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment did not incorporate the first eight Amendments of the Const.i.tution, and, conformably to Palko _v._ Connecticut,[925] exacts no more from a State than is "implicit in "the concept of ordered liberty."" He also proclaimed that: "The security of one"s privacy against arbitrary intrusion by the police--which is at the core of the Fourth Amendment--is basic to a free society. It is therefore implicit in "the concept of ordered liberty" and as such enforceable against the States through the due process clause."[926] Such language appears to effect the very absorption into the Fourteenth Amendment which Justice Frankfurter rejects in the Adamson case; but he concluded by adding that as long as "a State [does not] affirmatively * * * sanction * * *
[arbitrary] police incursion into privacy"; that is, as long as its police are deterred from making searches without authority of law by virtue of such internal discipline as an alert public opinion may induce and by reason of the statutory or common law remedies which the victims of such illegal searches may invoke, a State, without running counter to the due process clause, may employ at a trial incriminating evidence obtained by unlawful search and seizure. The fact that most of the English-speaking world, including 30 States and the British Commonwealth of Nations, does not regard the exclusion of evidence thus obtained, as vital to the protection of the right of privacy is interpreted by the Justice as lending abundant support to the merit of his position.[927]
Without departing from his previously adopted position which he restated in his dissenting opinion in Adamson _v._ California;[928]
namely, that the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment embraces the Fourth Amendment"s prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures, Justice Black concurred in the result on the ground that the exclusionary rule, whereby evidence procured in an illegal search and seizure is not admissible in a federal court, is "not a command of the Fourth Amendment but is a judicially created rule of evidence which Congress might negate."[929] Justices Douglas, Murphy, and Rutledge, in separate dissenting opinions, all declared that the Fourth Amendment was applicable to the States and that "evidence obtained in violation of it must be excluded in State prosecutions as well as in federal prosecutions, * * *."[930] Attacking Justice Frankfurter"s method of approach, Justice Murphy declared that the Court should not "decide due process questions by simply taking a poll of the rules in various jurisdictions, * * *" and agreed with Justice Rutledge that unless illegally obtained evidence is excluded, no effective sanction "exists to deter violations of the search and seizure clause."
In two recent cases, both argued the same day, a nearly unanimous Court reached opposite results.[931] In the first the outcome of the Wolf case was repeated. The Court, speaking by Justice Frankfurter, refused to enjoin the use, in State criminal proceedings against them in New Jersey of evidences claimed to have been obtained by unlawful search by State police. Said Justice Frankfurter, "If we were to sanction this intervention, we would expose every State criminal prosecution to insupportable disruption. Every question of procedural due process of law--with its far flung and undefined range--would invite a flanking movement against the system of State courts by resort to the federal forum * * *"[932] The facts in the second case were as follows: state officers, on the basis of "some information" that pet.i.tioner was selling narcotics, entered his home and forced their way into his wife"s bedroom. When asked about two capsules lying on a bedroom table, pet.i.tioner put them into his mouth and swallowed them. He was then taken to a hospital, where an emetic was forced into his stomach with the result that he vomited them up. Later they were offered in evidence against him. Again Justice Frankfurter spoke for the Court, while reiterating his preachments regarding the tolerance claimable by the States under the Fourteenth Amendment[933] he held that methods offensive to human dignity were ruled out by the due process clause.[934] Justices Black and Douglas concurred in opinions in which they seized the opportunity to reiterate once more their position in Adamson _v._ California.[935]