Stanley Forman Reed

“ In the McNabb case we tried to rid the federal system of those breeding grounds for coerced confessions.
Another time-honored police method for obtaining confessions is to arrest a man on one charge (often a minor one) and use his detention for investigating a wholly different crime. This is an easy short cut for the police. How convenient it is to make detention the vehicle of investigation! Then the police can have access to the prisoner day and night. Arraignment for one crime gives some protection. ”

“ We are framing here a rule of evidence for criminal trials in the federal courts. That rule must be drawn in light not of the facts of the particular case but of the system which the particular case reflects. ”

“ He had been arrested and committed for the assault perpetrated six weeks after the murder. His detention, therefore, was legal. Further, before the confession, there was basis for no more than a strong suspicion that Carignan was the murderer. That suspicion arose from a doubtful identification by a person who had in passing seen a man resembling the respondent at the scene of the murder and from a similarity of circumstances between the murder and the assault. [10] The police could hardly be expected to make a murder charge on such uncertainties without further inquiry and investigation. ”

“ Complete protection is afforded the civil rights of an accused who makes an involuntary confession or statement when such confession must be excluded by the judge or disregarded by the jury upon proof that it is not voluntary. ”