Sims v. Georgia

Decision Date18 December 1967
Docket NumberNo. 678,678
Citation389 U.S. 404,19 L.Ed.2d 634,88 S.Ct. 523
PartiesIsaac SIMS, Jr. v. GEORGIA
CourtU.S. Supreme Court

Jack Greenberg, James M. Nabrit III, Anthony G. Amsterdam and Howard Moore, Jr., for petitioner.

PER CURIAM.

This case is before us for the second time. Last Term we granted certiorari to consider five constitutional questions raised by petitioner in challenging his conviction for rape and his accompanying death sentence. 384 U.S. 998, 86 S.Ct. 1953, 16 L.Ed.2d 1013 (1966). Because we decided the case on the ground that petitioner had not received the hearing on the voluntariness of a confession introduced against him required by our decision in Jackson v. Denno, 378 U.S. 368, 84 S.Ct. 1774, 12 L.Ed.2d 908 (1964), we did not reach the other issues argued by the parties. 385 U.S. 538, 87 S.Ct. 639, 17 L.Ed.2d 593 (1967).

On remand the case was submitted to the judge who had presided at petitioner's original trial on the basis of the printed record previously before this Court. On that record alone the trial judge determined that petitioner's confession had been voluntary and denied a new trial. The trial court specifically refused to pass on any of the other questions previously briefed and argued here, holding that the prior rulings on these issues by the Georgia Supreme Court constituted the law of the case. The Georgia Supreme Court affirmed, upholding the trial court on all points.

In his present application petitioner raises again two of the four issues not reached in our previous decision in this case: the voluntariness of his confession and the composition of the juries by which he was indicted and tried.* In response to the State's previous argument that 'there was no evidence to make any issue of voluntariness' and therefore there was no need to apply Jackson v. Denno, Mr. Justice Clark stated:

'We cannot agree. There was a definite, clear-cut issue here. Petitioner testified that Doctor Jackson physically abused him while he was in his office and that he was suffering from that abuse when he made the statement, thereby rendering such confession involuntary and the result of coercion. The doctor admitted that he saw petitioner on the floor of his office; that he helped him disrobe and that he knew that petitioner required hospital treatment because of the laceration over his eye but he denied that petitioner was actually abused in his presence. He was unable to state, however, that the state patrolmen did not commit the alleged offenses against petitioner's person because he was not in the room during the entire time in which the petitioner and the patrolmen were there. In fact, the doctor was quite evasive in his testimony and none of the officers present during the incident were produced as witnesses. Petitioner's claim of mistreatment, therefore, went uncontradicted as to the officers and was in conflict with the testimony of the physician.' 385 U.S., at 543, 87 S.Ct. at 642.

Thus in remanding the case for a hearing on voluntariness we indicated to the State that as the evidence then stood it had failed adequately to rebut petitioner's testimony that he had been subjected to physical violence prior to his confession. The State had every opportunity to offer the police officers, whose failure to testify had already been commented upon here, to contradict petitioner's version of the events. Its failure to do so when given a second chance lends support to the conclusion that their testimony would not, in fact, have rebutted petitioner's.

It needs no extended citation of cases to show that a confession produced by violence or threats of violence is involuntary and cannot constitutionally be used against the person giving it. Beecher v. Alabama, 389 U.S. 35, 88 S.Ct. 189, 19 L.Ed.2d 35. The reliance by the State on...

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  • Montiel v. Chappell
    • United States
    • U.S. District Court — Eastern District of California
    • 25 Noviembre 2014
    ...file on yellow paper and whites on white paper. Whitus v. Georgia, 385 U.S. 545(1967); Jones v. Georgia, 389 U.S. 24 (1967); Sims v. Georgia, 389 U.S. 404 (1967). Similarly, a 16% disparity combined with selection process which identified race on the jury form constituted prima facie eviden......
  • Peters v. Kiff 8212 5078
    • United States
    • U.S. Supreme Court
    • 22 Junio 1972
    ... ... from the grand jury that indicted him and the petit jury that ... convicted him of burglary in the Superior Court of Muscogee ... County, Georgia. In consequence he contends that his conviction is ... invalid under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the ... Fourteenth Amendment ... 559, 73 S.Ct. 891, 97 L.Ed ... 1244 (1953); Hollins v. Oklahoma, 295 U.S. 394, 55 S.Ct. 784, 79 ... L.Ed. 1500 (1935) ... 8. Sims v. Georgia, 389 U.S. 404, 88 S.Ct. 523, 19 L.Ed.2d ... 634 (1967); Jones v. Georgia, 389 U.S. 24, 88 S.Ct. 4, 19 L.Ed.2d ... 25 (1967); Whitus v ... ...
  • Francis v. Henderson 10, 1975
    • United States
    • U.S. Supreme Court
    • 3 Mayo 1976
    ...31 L.Ed.2d 536, 540 (1972). See also, E. g., Peters v. Kiff, 407 U.S. 493, 92 S.Ct. 2163, 33 L.Ed.2d 83 (1972); Sims v. Georgia, 389 U.S. 404, 88 S.Ct. 523, 19 L.Ed.2d 634 (1967); Whitus v. Georgia, 385 U.S. 545, 87 S.Ct. 643, 17 L.Ed.2d 599 (1967); Arnold v. North Carolina, 376 U.S. 773, 8......
  • Hernandez v. New York
    • United States
    • U.S. Supreme Court
    • 28 Mayo 1991
    ...S.Ct. 1064, 30 L.Ed. 220 (1886); Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U.S. 339, 81 S.Ct. 105, 5 L.Ed.2d 110 (1960); Sims v. Georgia, 389 U.S. 404, 407, 88 S.Ct. 523, 525, 19 L.Ed.2d 634 (1967); Turner v. Fouche, 396 U.S. 346, 359, 90 S.Ct. 532, 539, 24 L.Ed.2d 567 (1970). The line between discrimina......
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1 books & journal articles
  • Chapter 4 False Confessions
    • United States
    • Carolina Academic Press Wrongful Conviction: Law, Science, and Policy (CAP) 2019
    • Invalid date
    ...methods to secure a confession, particularly when they know the suspect is unlikely to fully understand those rights. See Sims v. Georgia, 389 U.S. 404 (1967) (holding that where suspect had only third grade education, was deprived of contact with anyone outside, and was subjected to earlie......

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