Hugo Black

“ The Fifth Amendment forbids the Federal Government and the agents through which it acts-courts, grand juries, prosecutors, marshals or other officers-to use physical torture, psychological pressure, threats of fines, imprisonment or prosecution, or other governmental pressure to force a person to testify against himself. And if the Federal Government does extract incriminating testimony, as the Court has held it may in compelling gamblers to confess, the immunity provided by the Amendment should at the very least prevent the use of such testimony in any court, federal or state. ”

“ Considering the progress that scientific devices are making in extracting evidence without violence or bodily harm, satisfaction of due process would depend on the astuteness and subtlety with which the police engage in offensive practices and drastically invade privacy without authority of law. ”

“ Consequently, since the Amendment is the supreme law of the land and is binding on all American judges, the use of federally coerced testimony to convict a person of crime in any court, state or federal, is forbidden.
The Fifth Amendment not only forbids agents of the Federal Government to compel a person to be a witness against himself ”

“ They are only instances of the general requirement that States in their prosecutions respect certain decencies of civilized conduct. Due process of law, as a historic and generative principle, precludes defining, and thereby confining, these standards of conduct more precisely than to say that convictions cannot be brought about by methods that offend 'a sense of justice. ”

“ Since due process is not a mechanical yardstick, it does not afford mechanical answers. In applying the Due Process Clause judicial judgment is involved in an empiric process in the sense that results are not predetermined or mechanically ascertainable. ”

“ The holding of the case is that a State cannot resort to methods that offend civilized standards of decency and fairness. The conviction in the Rochin case was found to offend due process not because evidence had been obtained through an unauthorized search and seizure or was the fruit of compulsory self-incrimination. Neither of these concepts, relevant to federal prosecutions, was invoked by the Court in Rochin, so of course the Wolf case was not mentioned. ”

“ Empiricism implies judgment upon variant situations by the wisdom of experience. Ad hocness in adjudication means treating a particular case by itself and not in relation to the meaning of a course of decisions and the guides they serve for the future. ”

“ By boring a hole in the roof of the house and using the key they had made to enter, they installed a secret microphone in the Irvine house with a listening post in a neighboring garage where officers listened in relays. ”

“ People of State of California, 332 U.S. 46, 68, 67 S.Ct. 1672, 1684, 91 L.Ed. 1903 (dissenting opinion) ; Rochin v. People of California, 342 U.S. 165, 174, 72 S.Ct. 205, 210, 96 L.Ed. 183 (concurring opinion) .↑ That the prosecution in this case, with the sanction of the courts, flouted a legislatively declared philosophy against such miscreant conduct and made it a policy merely on paper, does not make the conduct any the less a disregard of due process. Cf. Rochin v. ”