Mallory v. United States

• Decision Date: 24 June 1957
• Docket Number: No. 521,521
• Parties: Andrew R. MALLORY, Petitioner, v. UNITED STATES of America
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

354 U.S. 449

77 S.Ct. 1356

1 L.Ed.2d 1479

Andrew R. MALLORY, Petitioner,

v UNITED STATES of America.

No. 521.

Argued April 1, 1957.

Decided June 24, 1957.

Mr. William B. Bryant, Washington, D.C., for the petitioner.

Mr. Edward L. Barrett, Jr., Sp. Asst. to the Atty. Gen., for the respondent.

Mr. Justice FRANKFURTER delivered the opinion of the Court.

Petitioner was convicted of rape in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, and, as authorized by the District Code, the jury imposed a death sentence. The Court of Appeals affirmed, one judge dissenting. 98 U.S.App.D.C. 406, 236 F.2d 701. Since an important question involving the interpretation of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, 18 U.S.C.A., was involved in this capital case, we granted the petition for certiorari. 352 U.S. 877, 77 S.Ct. 103, 1 L.Ed.2d 79.

The rape occurred at six p.m. on April 7, 1954, in the basement of the apartment house inhabited by the victim. She had descended to the basement a few minutes previous to wash some laundry. Experiencing some difficulty in detaching a hose in the sink, she sought help from the janitor, who lived in a basement apartment with his wife, two grown sons, a younger son and the petitioner, his nineteen-year-old half-brother. Petitioner was alone in the apartment at the time. He detached the hose and returned to his quarters. Very shortly thereafter, a masked man, whose general features were identified to resemble those of petitioner and his two grown nephews, attacked the woman. She had heard no one descend the wooden steps that furnished the only means of entering the basement from above.

Petitioner and one of his grown nephews disappeared from the apartment house shortly after the crime was committed. The former was apprehended the following afternoon between two and two-thirty p.m. and was taken, along with his older nephews, also suspects, to police headquarters. At least four officers questioned him there in the presence of other officers for thirty to forty-five minutes, beginning the examination by telling him, according to his testimony, that his brother had said that he was the assailant. Petitioner strenuously denied his guilt. He spent the rest of the afternoon at headquarters, in the company of the other two suspects and his brother a good part of the time. About four p.m. the three suspects were asked to submit to 'lie detector' tests, and they agreed. The officer in charge of the poly- graph machine was not located for almost two hours, during which time the suspects received food and drink. The nephews were then examined first. Questioning of petitioner began just after eight p.m. Only he and the polygraph operator were present in a small room, the door to which was closed.

Following almost an hour and one-half of steady interrogation, he 'first stated that he could have done this crime, or that he might have done it. He finally stated that he was responsible. * * *' (Testimony of polygraph operator, R. 70.) Not until ten p.m., after petitioner had repeated his confession to other officers, did the police attempt to reach a United States Commissioner for the purpose of arraignment. Failing in this, they obtained petitioner's consent to examination by the deputy coroner, who noted no indicia of physical or psychological coercion. Petitioner was then confronted by the complaining witness and '(p)ractically every man in the Sex Squad,' and in response to questioning by three officers, he repeated the confession. Between eleven-thirty p.m. and twelve-thirty a.m. he dictated the confession to a typist. The next morning he was brought before a Commissioner. At the trial, which was delayed for a year because of doubt about petitioner's capacity to understand the proceedings against him, the signed confession was introduced in evidence.

The case calls for the proper application of Rule 5(a) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, promulgated in 1946, 327 U.S. 821. That Rule provides:

'(a) Appearance before the Commissioner. An officer making an arrest under a warrant issued upon a complaint or any person making an arrest without a warrant shall take the arrested person without unnecessary delay before the nearest available commissioner or before any other nearby officer empowered to commit persons charged with offenses against the laws of the United States. When a person arrested without a warrant is brought before a commissioner or other officer, a complaint shall be filed forthwith.'

This provision has both statutory and judicial antecedents for guidance in applying it. The requirement that arraignment be 'without unnecessary delay' is a compendious restatement, without substantive change, of several prior specific federal statutory provisions. (E.g., 20 Stat. 327, 341; 48 Stat. 1008; also 28 Stat. 416.) See Dession, The New Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure I, 55 Yale L.J. 694, 707. Nearly all the States have similar enactments.

In McNabb v. United States, 318 U.S. 332, 343—344, 63 S.Ct. 608, 614, 87 L.Ed. 819, we spelled out the important reasons of policy behind this body of legislation:

'The purpose of this impressively pervasive requirement of criminal procedure is plain. * * * The awful instruments of the criminal law cannot be entrusted to a single functionary. The complicated process of criminal justice is therefore divided into different parts, responsibility for which is separately vested in the various participants upon whom the criminal law relies for its vindication. Legislation such as this, requiring that the police must with reasonable promptness show legal cause for detaining arrested persons, constitutes an important safeguard—not only in assuring protection for the innocent but also in securing conviction of the guilty by methods that commend themselves to a progressive and self-confident society. For this procedural requirement checks resort to those reprehensible practices known as the 'third degree' which, though universally rejected as indefensible, still find their way into use. It aims to avoid all the evil implications of secret interrogation of persons accused of crime.'

Since such unwarranted detention led to tempting utilization of intensive interrogation, easily gliding into the evils of 'the third degree,' the Court...