Robert H. Jackson

“ A beaten confession is a false foundation for any conviction, while evidence obtained by illegal search and seizure, wire-tapping, or larceny may be and often is of the utmost verity. Such police lawlessness therefore may not void state convictions while forced confessions will do so.
We find no error in refusing the instruction asked in this case.
But this does not exhaust petitioners' arsenal of objections. They argue that even if the jury were permitted to find the verdict, a reviewing court must set it aside. ”

“ We do not know whether, or how far, the court would have permitted any line of cross-examination, nor what specific limitation defendants would have claimed. We will not adjudge a trial court guilty of constructive abuse by imputing to it a ruling that never was made on a proposition that never was put to it.
Petitioners' attack is so unbounded and unqualified that it could prevail only if the Fourteenth Amendment were construed to allow them to testify to their coercion by the police, shielded from any cross-examination whatever. ”

“ The procedure adopted by New York for excluding coerced confessions relies heavily on the jury. It requires a preliminary hearing as to admissibility, but does not permit the judge to make a final determination that a confession is admissible. He may indeed, must-exclude any confession if he is convinced that it was not freely made or that a verdict that it was so made would be against the weight of evidence. But, while he may thus cast the die against the prosecution, he cannot do so against the accused. ”

“ When the penalty is death, we, like state court judges, are tempted to strain the evidence and even, in close cases, the law in order to give a doubtfully condemned man another chance. But we cannot see the slightest justification for reading the Fourteenth Amendment to deny the State of New York the power to hold these defendants guilty on the record before us. ”

“ It is only miscarriages of such gravity and magnitude that they cannot be expected to happen in an enlightened system of justice, or be tolerated by it if they do, that cause us to intervene to review, in the name of the Federal Constitution, the weight of conflicting evidence to support a decision by a state court. ”

“ It is urged that admitted facts show psychological pressure by interrogation, such as to overpower these petitioners' mental resistance and induce involuntary confessions. Of course, a process of interrogation can be so prolonged and unremitting, especially when accompanied by deprivation of refreshment, rest or relief, as to accomplish extortion of an involuntary confession.
But the inquiry as to such allegations has a different point of departure. Interrogation is not inherently coercive, as is physical violence. ”

“ If they had given such testimony, it would have been in direct conflict with that of the police, and the decision would depend on which was believable. Certainly the Constitution does not prohibit tests of credibility which American law uniformly applies to witnesses. If in open court, free from violence or threat of it, defendants had been obliged to admit incriminating facts, it might bear on the credibility of their claim that the same facts were admitted to the police only in response to beating. ”

“ If the general rule is not prohibited, the question in each case becomes one as to the propriety of its application to the evidence. In a trial such as this, lasting seven weeks, where objections by three defense counsel required in excess of three hundred rulings by the trial court without the long deliberation and debate possible for appellate court consideration, it would be a miracle if there were not some questions on which an appellate court would rule otherwise than did the trial judge. ”

“ It is hard to see why a jury should be allowed to return a verdict which cannot be allowed to stand. If having heard an illegally obtained confession prevents a legal verdict of guilty on other sufficient evidence, why permit return of one foredoomed to be illegal? The alternative, of course, is an acquittal, which is what petitioners asked. ”

“ The tendency of the innocent, as well as the guilty, to risk remote results of a false confession rather than suffer immediate pain is so strong that judges long ago found it necessary to guard against miscarriages of justice by treating any confession made concurrently with torture or threat of brutality as too untrustworthy to be received as evidence of guilt. ”

“ That court, in a death case, is empowered by statute to order a new trial for errors of law, or if the conviction is found to be 'against the weight of evidence', or if the court is satisfied for any reason whatever 'that justice requires a new trial'. ”

“ But we have never gone so far as to hold that the Fourteenth Amendment requires a one-to-one ratio between interrogators and prisoners, or that extensive questioning of a prisoner automatically makes the evidence he gives in response constitutionally prohibited.
The inward consciousness of having committed a murder and a robbery and of being confronted with evidence of guilt which they could neither deny nor explain seems enough to account for the confessions here. These men were not young, soft, ignorant or timid. ”

“ The harmless-error statutes have been adopted to give discretion to overlook errors which cannot be seen to do injustice.
But, whatever may have been the grounds of the Court of Appeals, we base our decision, not upon grounds that error has been harmless, but upon the ground that we find no constitutional error. ”

“ We are not willing to discredit constitutional doctrines for protection of the innocent by making of them mere technical loopholes for the escape of the guilty. The petitioners have had fair trial and fair review. The people of the State are also entitled to due process of law. ”

“ Interrogation does have social value in solving crime, as physical force does not. By their own answers many suspects clear themselves, and the information they give frequently points out another who is guilty. ”

“ Physical violence.-Physical violence or threat of it by the custodian of a prisoner during detention serves no lawful purpose, invalidates confessions that otherwise would be convincing, and is universally condemned by the law. When present, there is no need to weigh or measure its effects on the will of the individual victim. ”

“ Perhaps a more serious, practical cause of dissatisfaction is the absence of any assurance that the confessions did not serve as makeweights in a compromise verdict, some jurors accepting the confessions to overcome lingering doubt of guilt, others rejecting them but finding their doubts satisfied by other evidence, and yet others or perhaps all never reaching a separate and definite conclusion as to the confessions but returning an unanalytical and impressionistic verdict based on all they had heard. ”

“ The trial judge, too, has a heavy responsibility resulting from broad powers to set aside a verdict if he thinks the evidence does not warrant it. [18] Petitioners submitted such a motion, which the judge denied, thus adding the weight of his own approval to the jury verdict.
An attack on the fairness of New York procedure is that petitioners could not take the witness stand to support, with their own oaths, the charges their counsel made against the state police without becoming subject to general cross-examination. State law on the subject is disputed and uncertain. ”

“ From the foregoing considerations, we conclude that if the jury resolved that the confessions were admissible as a basis for conviction it was not
constitutional error. V. If the Jury Rejected the Confessions, Could It Constitutionally Base a Conviction on Other Sufficient Evidence?
Petitioners raised this question by a request for instruction to the jury that if it found the confessions to have been coerced it must return a verdict of acquittal. This was refused. Their principal authority for the requested charge is Malinski v. People of State of New York, 324 U.S. 401, 65 S.Ct. ”

“ Wissner.-Wissner was arrested about 9 a.m. on June 7 subsequent to Cooper's confession, which implicated him-and taken to Hawthorne, where he remained until his arraignment. He made no confession.
There is no direct testimony that petitioners were subjected to physical violence or the threat of it during their detention. [10] None of the defendants took the witness stand to substantiate their claims. With one exception, every police officer who had contact with Cooper or Stein during detention was or could have been questioned about it by the defense. ”

“ Third-degree violence has been too often denounced by courts for anything useful to come out of mere repetition of invectives. It is a crime under state law and, in some circumstances, under federal law. ”

“ The limits in any case depend upon a weighing of the circumstances of pressure against the power of resistance of the person confessing. What would be overpowering to the weak of will or mind might be utterly ineffective against an experienced criminal.
Both Stein and Cooper confessed only after about twelve hours of intermittent questioning. In each case this was stretched out over a 32-hour period, with the suspect sleeping and eating in the interim. In the case of Cooper, a substantial part of this time he spent driving a bargain with the police and the parole officers. ”

“ The defendants' contentions as to physical violence rest entirely on circumstantial evidence. They would be utterly without support except for inferences, which they urge, from the admitted fact that when first physically examined, the day after arraignment, they showed certain bruises and injuries which could have been sustained from violent 'third-degree' methods. On the morning of June 9, they were examined by the prison physician. Cooper had been in custody at the barracks between three and four days, Stein three days and Wissner two days. ”

“ The duty to disclose knowledge of crime rests upon all citizens. ”

“ It is common courtroom knowledge that extortion of confessions by 'third-degree' methods is charged falsely as well as denied falsely. The practical problem is to separate the true from the false. Primary, and in most cases final, responsibility for determining contested facts rests, and must rest, upon state trial and appellate courts. ”

“ An employee of the Reader's Digest at Pleasantville testified that he had seen the Spring Rental truck on the premises on April 3 and on one prior occasion. (6) Jeppeson's testimony substantiated Dorfman's story about rental of the truck. [9] (7) It was established that Cooper had absented himself from his job on April 3. (8) Waterbury's testimony about the events of April 3 and identification of Stein and Wissner checked with Dorfman's story. (9) The two confessions, if accepted by the jury, also were corroborative of the accomplice Dorfman in many details. ”

“ Even where it finds that the jury could 'reasonably credit the denial of the police', if it considers that the prosecution had failed to produce all reasonably available evidence to clear charges of coercion, it will order 'a new trial, where there can be a more adequate search for the truth.' People v. ”

“ The trial court heard evidence in the presence of the jury as to the issue of coercion and left determination of the question to the jury. Petitioners claim that such use of these confessions creates a constitutional infirmity which requires this Court to set aside the conviction.
I. Facts About the Crime.
The main office of Reader's Digest is thirty-one miles from New York City, in the relatively rural area of northern Westchester County, near the town of Pleasantville. From this secluded headquarters a truck several times each day makes a run to and from town. ”

“ On cross-examination, he recounted that he had picked Wissner out of a lineup at Hawthorne Barracks on June 8 and identified him as the killer. [6]
Jeppeson testified that the rental truck had been let to Cooper an April 3 and on three previous occasions, Cooper having in each case used an alias and a false license as before stated, and having given his occupation as 'bookseller.' He also testified as to his conversation with Cooper on the morning of the latter's arrest. ”

“ People v. Goldstein, 285 N.Y. 376, 34 N.E.2d 362.↑ There is conflict between the testimony of Homishak and Dorfman, the former placing the four conspiractors on April 3 at a place different from that where Dorfman says they were.↑ Jeppeson stated that the truck was rented in each case on a Saturday and returned on two occasions early Monday morning which contradicts Dorfman's testimony that each junket to Pleasantville had been on a Monday morning. ”

“ People v. Rudish, 294 N.Y. 500, 63 N.E.2d 77. Surely in the light of the other testimony such a deletion from the confessions here would not have diverted their incriminating statements from Wissner to an anonymous nobody.
Wissner, however, contends that his federal rights were infringed because he was unable to cross-examine accusing witnesses, i.e., the confessors. He contends that the 'privilege of confrontation' is secured by the Fourteenth Amendment, relying on one sentence in Snyder v. ”

“ For the New York rule does not appear to us to be free from doubt. See People v. Fisher, 249 N.Y. 419, 426, 164 N.E. 336, 338; People v. Samuels, 302 N.Y. 163, 173, 96 N.E.2d 757, 762; People v. Leyra, 304 N.Y. 468, 108 N.E.2d 673.↑ N.Y.Const., Art. I, § 6.↑ N.Y.Code Crim.Proc., § 395. Prior to 1881, coerced confessions were excluded under common-law doctrines of evidence. See People v. Mondon, 103 N.Y. 211, 8 N.E. 496; People v. McMahon, 15 N.Y. 384.↑ N.Y.Code Crim.Proc., § 528.↑ The jury were instructed as follows:↑ N.Y.Code Crim.Proc. ”