Coerced confession

“ State of Ohio, 332 U.S. 596, 68 S.Ct. 302, 92 L.Ed. 224, 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. ”

“ And we have held that this provision means that coerced confessions cannot be used as evidence to convict a defendant charged with crime. See, e.g., Haynes v. Washington, 373 U.S. 503, 83 S.Ct. 1336; Chambers v. Florida, 309 U.S. 227, 60 S.Ct. 472; Brown v. Mississippi, 297 U.S. 278, 56 S.Ct. 461, 80 L.Ed. 682. It is our duty when a conviction for crime comes to us based in part on a confession to review the record to decide for ourselves whether that confession was freely and voluntarily given. ”

“ The question whether or not a confession is coerced involves a complex judgment upon facts inevitably entangled with assumptions and standards which are part and parcel of the ultimate issue of constitutionality. ”

“ The practice of obtaining confessions prior to arraignment breeds the third degree and the inquisition. As long as it remains lawful for the police to hold persons incommunicado, coerced confessions will infect criminal trials in violation of the commands of due process of law. ”

“ It happens, perhaps, that only one or two are captured, and they assume all the guilt, e.g., in cases of larceny, brawls, rioting, etc. I repeat: the suggestive power of a confession is great and it is hence really not easy to exclude its influence and to consider the balance of the evidence on its merits,—but this must be done if one is not to deceive oneself. ”

“ In the confessional every thing is corruption of the lowest grade. There, the girl's thoughts, lips, hearts and souls are forever polluted. Do I need to prove you this? No! for though you have given up, long since auricular confession, as below the dignity of man, you have not forgotten the lessons of corruption which you have received from it. Those lessons have remained on your souls as the scars left by the red hot iron upon the brow of the slave to be a perpetual witness of his shame and servitude. ”

“ The quantity stolen is generally exaggerated, moreover, in order to excite universal sympathy and perhaps to invoke help. In general, we must hold that there is no psychological reason that a confessor should deny anything the confession of which can bring him no additional harm. ”

“ You have surely committed no crime; you have neither robbed, nor murdered, nor betrayed. If you have, there is no room for the fear of punishment or the terror of disgrace to step in, and make you hide your guilt from me. You cannot dread any further disclosure, because I can have no interest in your ruin or your shame: and what evil could ensue the confession of the foulest murder, even before a bench of magistrates, more dreadful than that which will inevitably follow the practice of the least concealment to me, or the least undue disclosure to others? ”

“ It is remarkable that it is of very rare occurrence for evidence of a confession to be given when the proof of the prisoner’s guilt is otherwise clear and satisfactory, but, when it is not, the prisoner is not infrequently alleged to have been seized with the desire, born of penitence and remorse, to supplement it with a confession—a desire which vanishes as soon as he appears in a court of justice. ”

“ You would very likely call me a scoundrel for daring to question the honesty and purity of such holy men. You would perhaps go as far as to contend that it is utterly impossible for them to be guilty of such sins as are alluded to in the above question; that never such shameful deeds have been perpetrated through confession. And you would, maybe, emphatically deny that your confessor has ever said or done anything that might lead you to sin or even commit any breach of propriety or modesty. ”

“ Confession then is allowed to be a convincing proof, especially when obtained by the force of torture; at the same time that an extrajudicial confession, when a man is at ease and under no apprehension, is not sufficient for his condemnation. ”

“ We are by it taught that the guilt of sins unrecognised as sins at the time of their committal, cannot be cancelled merely by penitent confession when they become known. Confession must indeed be made, according to the law, as one condition of pardon, but, besides this, the guilty man must bring his sin-offering. ”

“ We all know of various cases in which a man, angry at the betrayal of an accomplice, happy over approaching release, or terrified by the likelihood of arrest, etc., suddenly declares, “Now I am going to tell the truth.” And this is a typical form which introduces the subsequent confession. As a rule the resolution to tell the truth does not last long. If the emotion passes, the confession is regretted, and much thought is given to the withdrawal of a part of the confession. ”

“ Why does not innocence,—native, conscious innocence,—if, in reality, there is such a thing,—teach woman to flee from those incarnate demons, Romish confessors? Why will they entrust themselves, alone and unprotected by father or mother, brother or honorable lover, with these scheming, artful seducers? Why will mothers, married women, go to confession to these men, or why will husbands be such inconceivable dupes as to permit it? Have husbands any idea of the questions which a confessor puts to their wives? They have not even the remotest. ”

“ It is an established maxim, that no man can be obliged to accuse himself, or to answer any questions which may have any tendency to discover what the nature of his defence requires to be concealed. His guilt must appear either by a voluntary and unconstrained confession, which the terrours of conscience have sometimes extorted, and the notoriety of the crime has at other times produced, or by the deposition of such witnesses as the jury shall think worthy of belief. ”

“ Had this wretched man told you of his sin anywhere else than where he did—had you been with him in the open street, or in your private rooms, you would be justified in refusing to keep his secret for him, even though you are a priest. But he came to you, believing that he was safe in speaking openly to a confessor; therefore, to betray his confidence would be to perjure yourself, and without effecting your object. You could not take the secrets of the confessional into an open court of law as witness of a man’s guilt. ”

“ As important as it is that persons who have committed crimes be convicted, there are considerations which transcend the question of guilt or innocence. Thus, in cases involving involuntary confessions, this Court enforces the strongly felt attitude of our society that important human values are sacrificed where an agency of the government, in the course of securing a conviction, wrings a confession out of an accused against his will. ”

“ But the duty of deference cannot be allowed imperceptibly to slide into an abdication by this Court of its obligation to ascertain whether, under the circumstances of a particular case, a confession represents not the candor of a guilty conscience, the need of an accused to unburden himself, but the means of release from the tightening of the psychological police screws. ”

“ A free and voluntary confession is deserving of the highest credit, because it is presumed to flow from the strongest sense of guilt, and therefore it is admitted as proof of the crime to which it refers; but a confession forced from the mind by the flattery of hope or the torture of fear comes in so questionable a shape when it is to be considered the evidence of guilt that no credit ought to be given to it. ”

“ By refusing to allow an uncorroborated confession to be made the basis of a conviction, the State simply throws the mantle of charity and protection around the ignorance of the prisoner who confesses. It is also well known that men will frequently confess guilt when they are not guilty; sometimes, when they are even ignorant of the facts constituting the offense. ”

“ Every thing that authority can effect by means of advice, which, under the circumstances, is equivalent to command, is carefully brought forward to prevent a confession. And if, in spite of checks, warnings, and commands, the accused, overcome by the pangs of conscience, and urged by an irresistible impulse to disburden his soul of guilt, should perchance confess, the testimony is sometimes rejected upon some technical point of law, which would seem to have been established for the express purpose of defeating the ends of justice. ”

“ It is just as uncivilized to brutalize an accused person into telling the truth as it is to force him to fabricate a confession. The torture and coercion are what the Constitution condemns. Hence all allegation that a confession is involuntary is not rendered unreasonable because of the apparent truthfulness of that confession.
(3) The Court refers to the absence of any evidence at the original trial of any physical or mental coercion or of any inducement or promise bearing upon the confession made by petitioner. ”

“ If my testimony should not be necessary, or serviceable, yet, perhaps, I am bound, in conscience, to take shame to myself by a public confession, which, however sincere, comes too late to prevent, or repair, the misery and mischief to which I have, formerly, been accessary. ”

“ Such a problem is seldom simple and easy, and as there is no possibility of contradiction, the danger is nowhere so great of making light of the matter. “What is reasserted is half proved.” That is a comfortable assertion, and leads to considerable incorrectness. A confession is only established in truth when it is construed psychologically, when the whole inner life of the confessor and his external conditions are brought into relation with it, and the remaining motives established as at least possible. ”

“ Of course, no confession that has been obtained by any form of physical violence to the person is reliable and 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. ”

“ And yet such sudden changes take place daily in the world of crime and passion. In one uncalled-for confession, of which it is hard to trace the smallest reasonable cause, the intricate wickednesses of a lifetime are revealed and repeated; in the mysterious impulse of a moment the murderer turns back and delivers himself to justice; under an influence for which there is often no accounting, the woman who has sinned securely through long years lays bare her guilt and throws herself upon the mercy of the man whom she has so skilfully and consistently deceived. ”

“ If the confessor only intends to free himself from these disturbing images and the consequent punishment by means of confession, we are not dealing with what is properly called conscience, but more or less with disease, with an abnormally excited imagination. ”

“ Furthermore they will not permit of a man being hanged for a crime confessed to by another without that confession is clearly proved untrue, even though he can make his own confession appear true. In short, had these two wild people acted in collusion they could have designed no better way of confounding justice. ”

“ But we do desire to exclaim against any further exhibition of that morbid tenderness wherewith all persons are sure to be treated, if only they are accused of enormities more than usually disgusting; and we specially protest against that foolish, however ancient, rule in our criminal law, which discourages and rejects the slenderest approach to a confession, while it has sacrificed many an innocent victim to the uncertainty of evidence, supported by nothing more safe than outward circumstantials. ”

“ Now both these opinions, by exaggerating the seal of confession, are prejudicial to the truth and to the safeguarding of justice. For a man might be more inclined to sin, if he had no fear of being accused by his confessor supposing that he repeated the sin in his presence: and furthermore it would be most prejudicial to justice if a man could not bear witness to a deed which he has seen committed again after being confessed to him. ”

“ You never dream of uttering a harmful one. Do you know that that is a concession—and a confession?”
“How do you mean?”
“It is an unconscious concession that harmless lies are not criminal; it is a confession that you constantly make that discrimination. For instance, you declined old Mrs. Foster's invitation last week to meet those odious Higbies at supper—in a polite note in which you expressed regret and said you were very sorry you could not go. It was a lie. It was as unmitigated a lie as was ever uttered. Deny it, Hester—with another lie.” ”

“ But the confession here required is that of Christians to one another, and not, as the papists would have it, to a priest. Where persons have injured one another, acts of injustice must be confessed to those against whom they have been committed. Where persons have tempted one another to sin or have consented in the same evil actions, there they ought mutually to blame themselves and excite each other to repentance. Where crimes are of a public nature, and have done any public mischief, there they ought to be more publicly confessed, so as may best reach to all who are concerned. ”

“ It should be equally clear that if the person does not feel guilt he is not in his own mind guilty and will not confess to an act which others may regard as evil or wrong and he, in fact, considers correct. Confession in such a case can come only with duress even where all other conditions previously mentioned may prevail." The accused, finally, is pushed far enough along the path toward confession that it is easier for him to keep going than to turn back. ”