CPCASES

CHAPTER TWO DID POLICE INTERROGATION PRACTICES VIOLATE DUE PROCESS OF LAW? BROWN V. MISSISSIPPI
297 U.S. 278 (1936)
Hughes, J.
Issue
The question in this case is whether convictions, which rest solely upon
confessions shown to have been extorted by officers of the State by
brutality and violence, are consistent with the due process of law required
by the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.
Facts
Petitioners were indicted for the murder of one Raymond Stewart, whose
death occurred on March 30, 1934. They were indicted on April 4, 1934, and
were then arraigned and pleaded not guilty. Counsel were appointed by the
court to defend them. Trial was begun the next morning and was concluded on
the following day, when they were found guilty and sentenced to death.
Aside from the confessions, there was no evidence sufficient to warrant the
submission of the case to the jury. After a preliminary inquiry, testimony
as to the confessions was received over the objection of defendants'
counsel. Defendants then testified that the confessions were false and had
been procured by physical torture. The case went to the jury with
instructions, upon the request of defendants' counsel, that if the jury had
reasonable doubt as to the confessions having resulted from coercion, and
that they were not true, they were not to be considered as evidence. On
their appeal to the Supreme Court of the State, defendants assigned as
error the inadmissibility of the confessions. The judgment was affirmed....
The opinion of the state court did not set forth the evidence as to the
circumstances in which the confessions were procured. That the evidence
established that they were procured by coercion was not questioned. The
state court said: "After the state closed its case on the merits, the
appellants, for the first time, introduced evidence from which it appears
that the confessions were not made voluntarily but were coerced." There is
no dispute as to the facts upon this point ....showing both the extreme
brutality of the measures to extort the confessions and the participation
of the state authorities.
The crime with which these defendants, all ignorant negroes, are
charged, was discovered about one o'clock p.m. on Friday, March 30, 1934.
On that night one Dial, a deputy sheriff, accompanied by others, came to
the home of Ellington, one of the defendants, and requested him to
accompany them to the house of the deceased, and there a number of white
men were gathered, who began to accuse the defendant of the crime. Upon his
denial they seized him, and with the participation of the deputy they
hanged him by a rope to the limb of a tree, and having let him down, they
hung him again, and when he was let down the second time, and he still
protested his innocence, he was tied to a tree and whipped, and still
declining to accede to the demands that he confess, he was finally released
and he returned with some difficulty to his home, suffering intense pain
and agony. The record of the testimony shows that the signs of the rope on
his neck were plainly visible during the so-called trial. A day or two
thereafter the said deputy, accompanied by another, returned to the home of
the said defendant and arrested him, and departed with the prisoner towards
the jail in an adjoining county, but went by a route which led into the
State of Alabama; and while on the way, in that State, the deputy stopped
and again severely whipped the defendant, declaring that he would continue
the whipping until he confessed, and the defendant then agreed to
confess to such a statement as the deputy would dictate, and he did so,
after which he was delivered to jail. The other two defendants, Ed Brown and Henry Shields, were also
arrested and taken to the same jail. On Sunday night, April 1, 1934, the
same deputy, accompanied by a number of white men, one of whom was also an
officer, and by the jailer, came to the jail, and the two last named
defendants were made to strip and they were laid over chairs and their
backs were cut to pieces with a leather strap with buckles on it, and they
were likewise made by the said deputy definitely to understand that the
whipping would be continued unless and until they confessed, and not only
confessed, but confessed in every matter of detail as demanded by those
present; and in this manner the defendants confessed the crime, and as the
whippings progressed and were repeated, they changed or adjusted their
confession in all particulars of detail so as to conform to the demands of
their torturers. When the confessions had been obtained in the exact form
and contents as desired by the mob, they left with the parting admonition
and warning that, if the defendants changed their story at any time in any
respect from that last stated, the perpetrators of the outrage would
administer the same or equally effective treatment.
Further details of the brutal treatment to which these helpless
prisoners were subjected need not be pursued. It is sufficient to say that
in pertinent respects the transcript reads more like pages torn from some
medieval account, than a record made within the confines of a modern
civilization which aspires to an enlightened constitutional government.
All this having been accomplished, on the next day, that is, on
Monday, April 2, when the defendants had been given time to recuperate
somewhat from the tortures to which they had been subjected, the two
sheriffs, one of the county where the crime was committed, and the other
of the county of the jail in which the prisoners were confined, came to the
jail, accompanied by eight other persons, some of them deputies, there to
hear the free and voluntary confession of these miserable and abject
defendants. The sheriff of the county of the crime admitted that he had
heard of the whipping, but averred that he had no personal knowledge of it.
He admitted that one of the defendants, when brought before him to confess,
was limping and did not sit down, and that this particular defendant then
and there stated that he had been strapped so severely that he could not
sit down, and as already stated, the signs of the rope on the neck of
another of the defendants were plainly visible to all. Nevertheless the
solemn farce of hearing the free and voluntary confessions was gone through
with, and these two sheriffs and one other person then present were the
three witnesses used in court to establish the so-called confessions, which
were received by the court and admitted in evidence over the objections of
the defendants duly entered of record as each of the said three witnesses
delivered their alleged testimony. There was thus enough before the court
when these confessions were first offered to make known to the court that
they were not, beyond all reasonable doubt, free and voluntary; and the
failure of the court then to exclude the confessions is sufficient to
reverse the judgment, under every rule of procedure that has heretofore
been prescribed, and hence it was not necessary subsequently to renew the
objections by motion or otherwise.
The spurious confessions having been obtained -- and the farce last
mentioned having been gone through with on Monday, April 2d -- the court,
then in session, on the following day, Tuesday, April 3, 1934, ordered the
grand jury to reassemble on the succeeding day, April 4, 1934, at nine
o'clock, and on the morning of the day last mentioned [*284] the grand
jury returned an indictment against the defendants for murder. Late that
afternoon the defendants were brought from the jail in the adjoining county
and arraigned, when one or more of them offered to plead guilty, which the
court declined to accept, and, upon inquiry whether they had or desired
counsel, they stated that they had none, and did not suppose that counsel
could be of any assistance to them. The court thereupon appointed counsel,
and set the case for trial for the following morning at nine o'clock, and
the defendants were returned to the jail in the adjoining county about
thirty miles away.
The defendants were brought to the courthouse of the county on the
following morning, April 5th, and the so-called trial was opened, and was
concluded on the next day, April 6, 1934, and resulted in a pretended
conviction with death sentences. The evidence upon which the conviction was
obtained was the so-called confessions. Without this evidence a peremptory
instruction to find for the defendants would have been inescapable. The
defendants were put on the stand, and by their testimony the facts and the
details thereof as to the manner by which the confessions were extorted
from them were fully developed, and it is further disclosed by the record
that the same deputy, Dial, under whose guiding hand and active
participation the tortures to coerce the confessions were administered, was
actively in the performance of the supposed duties of a court deputy in the
courthouse and in the presence of the prisoners during what is denominated,
in complimentary terms, the trial of these defendants. This deputy was put
on the stand by the state in rebuttal, and admitted the whippings. It is
interesting to note that in his testimony with reference to the whipping of
the defendant Ellington, and in response to the inquiry as to how severely
he was whipped, the deputy stated, 'Not too much for a negro; not as much
as I would have done if it were left to me.' Two others who had
participated in these whippings were introduced and admitted it -- not a
single witness was introduced who denied it. The facts are not only
undisputed, they are admitted, and admitted to have been done by officers
of the state, in conjunction with other participants, and all this was
definitely well known to everybody connected with the trial, and during the
trial, including the state's prosecuting a