People v. Walker, 44

• Citation: 132 N.W.2d 87,374 Mich. 331
• Decision Date: 05 January 1965
• Docket Number: No. 44,44
• Parties: The PEOPLE of the State of Michigan, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Lee Dell WALKER, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: Supreme Court of Michigan

Page 87

132 N.W.2d 87

374 Mich. 331

The PEOPLE of the State of Michigan, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Lee Dell WALKER, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 44.

Supreme Court of Michigan.

Jan. 5, 1965.

Samuel J. Torina, Grosse Pointe Park, for plaintiff.

Albert Best, Detroit, for defendant.

Before the Entire Bench.

O'HARA, Justice.

By an equally divided Court, defendant's conviction of first degree murder was upheld in People v. Walker, 371 Mich. 599, 124 N.W.2d 761. Rehearing and reargument was granted.

In fairness to the circuit bench, the prosecuting attorneys of the State, the defense bar, and through them all, to the ultimate repository of our judicial responsibility--the citizenry of Michigan--we owe a duty to speak clearly of the effect of Jackson v. Denno, 378 U.S. 368, 84 S.Ct. 1774, 12 L.Ed.2d 908), handed down since our previous decision herein.

If we read Jackson v. Denno, supra, correctly the action of the trial judge in submitting the question of the voluntariness of defendant's confession to the same jury which was trying the issue of his guilt or innocence without first, on a separate record, making separate determination thereof is no longer a permissible rule of law. The question before us now is which of the 2 rules therein approved constitutionally by the United States Supreme Court is to be adopted in Michigan.

The question in Jackson v. Denno, supra, as here, was the admissibility of a confession claimed to have been involuntarily made. The New York State court, where Jackson was tried and convicted, admitted the confession under its rule. That rule ¹ historically has been the rule of this State. Very simply stated it is: If under no circumstances the confession could be deemed voluntary, the trial judge was obligated to exclude it. If the evidence presented a fair question of fact as to its voluntary nature, the confession was received and the jury under proper instruction determined the question. The trial judge followed that rule. Defendant was convicted. He filed a petition for habeas corpus in the Federal district court. The writ was there denied and the court of appeals affirmed. Certiorari was granted by the United States Supreme Court 'to consider fundamental questions about the constitutionality of the New York procedure governing the admissibility of a confession alleged to be involuntary.'

The Court then answered:

'Under the New York procedure, the evidence given the jury inevitably injects irrelevant and impermissible consideration of truthfulness of the confession into the assessment of voluntariness. Indeed the jury is told to determine the truthfulness of the confession in assessing its probative value. As a consequence, it cannot be assumed, as the Stein ² Court did, that the jury reliably found the facts against the accused. This unsound assumption undermines Stein's authority as a precedent and its view on the constitutionality of the New York procedure. The admixture of reliability and voluntariness in the considerations of the jury would itself entitle a defendant to further proceedings in any case in which the essential facts are disputed, for we cannot determine how the jury resolved these issues and will not assume that they were reliably and property resolved against the accused. And it is only a reliable determination on the voluntariness issue which satisfies the constitutional rights of the defendant and which would permit the jury to consider the confession in adjudicating guilt or innocence.

'But we do not rest on this ground alone, for the other alternative hypothesized in Stein--that the jury found the confession involuntary and disregarded it--is equally unacceptable. Under the New York procedure, the fact of a defendant's confession is solidly implanted in the jury's mind, for it has not only heard the confession, but it has been instructed to consider and judge its voluntariness and is in position to assess whether it is true or false. If it finds the confession involuntary, does the jury--indeed, can it--then disregard the confession in accordance with its instructions? If there are lingering doubts about the sufficiency of the other evidence, does the jury unconsciously lay them to rest by resort to the confession? Will uncertainty about the sufficiency of the other evidence to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt actually result in acquittal when the jury knows the defendant has given a truthful confession?

'It is difficult, if not impossible, to prove that a confession which a jury has found to be involuntary has nevertheless influenced the verdict or that its findings of voluntariness, if this is the course it took, was affected by the other evidence showing the confession was true. But the New York procedure poses substantial threats to a defendant's constitutional rights to have an involuntary confession entirely disregarded and to have the coercion issue fairly and reliably determined. These hazards we cannot ignore.

'As reflected in the cases in this Court, police conduct requiring exclusion of a confession has evolved from acts of clear physical brutality to more refined and subtle methods of overcoming a defendant's will.

"[T]his Court has recognized that coercion can be mental as well as physical, and that the blood of the accused is not the only hallmark of an unconstitutional inquisition. A number of cases have demonstrated, if demonstration were needed, that the efficiency of the rack and thumbscrew can be matched, given the proper subject, by more sophisticated modes of 'persuasion." Blackburn v. Alabama, 361 U.S. 199, 206, 80 S.Ct. 274, 279 .

'Expanded concepts of fairness in obtaining confessions have been accompanied by a correspondingly greater complexity in determining whether an accused's will has been overborne--facts are frequently disputed, questions of credibility are often crucial, and inferences to be drawn from established facts are often determinative. The overall determination of the voluntariness of a confession has thus become an exceedingly sensitive task, one that requires facing the issue squarely, an illuminating isolation and unbeclouded by other issues and the effect of extraneous but prejudicial evidence. See Wilson v. United States, 162 U.S. 613, [16 S.Ct. 895, 40 L.Ed. 1090]; United States v. Carignan, 342 U.S. 36, [72 S.Ct. 97, 96 L.Ed. 48]; Smith v. United States, 348 U.S. 147, [75 S.Ct. 194, 99 L.Ed. 192]. Where pure factual considerations are an important ingredient, which is true in the usual case, appellate review, in this Court is, as a practical matter, an inadequate substitute for a full and reliable determination of the voluntariness issue in the trial court and the trial court's determination, pro tanto, takes on an increasing finality. The procedures used in the trial court to arrive at its conclusions on the coercion issue progressively take on added significance as the actual measure of the protection afforded a defendant under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment against the use of involuntary confessions. These procedures must,...