Sorenson v. United States

• Decision Date: 01 March 1906
• Docket Number: 2,249.
• Citation: 143 F. 820
• Parties: SORENSON et al. v. UNITED STATES.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

143 F. 820

SORENSON et al. v. UNITED STATES.

No. 2,249.

United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.

March 1, 1906

W. A Spurrier (E. C. Mills and E. D. Perry, on the brief), for plaintiffs in error.

Lewis Miles (George B. Stewart, on the brief), for defendant in error.

Before SANBORN, HOOK, and ADAMS, Circuit Judges.

SANBORN Circuit Judge.

Sorenson and Hodge, the defendants below, were jointly indicted tried, and convicted under section 5478, Revised Statutes (U.S.Comp.St. 1901, p. 3696), for the burglary of a post office at Van Meter in the state of Iowa on the night of September 29, 1904. At the trial the government introduced in evidence, over the objection and exception of the defendant Hodge, an alleged confession of Sorenson made on October 20 1904, in the absence of Hodge, wherein Sorenson stated that Hodge participated in the crime. The receipt of this statement was error. The court should have excluded Sorenson's declaration against Hodge, and, if it was competent evidence against Sorenson, it should have admitted it against him alone. Where two or more defendants are jointly tried for the same offense, or for a conspiracy to commit it, the declaration of no one of them, made in the absence of another after the completion of the offense, is competent evidence against the latter. It is hearsay. Sparf v. U.S., 156 U.S. 51, 56, 15 Sup.Ct. 273, 39 L.Ed. 343; Logan v. U.S., 144 U.S. 263, 309, 12 Sup.Ct. 617, 36 L.Ed. 429; Brown v. U.S., 150 U.S 93, 98, 14 Sup.Ct. 37, 37 L.Ed. 1010.

A post office inspector testified that on October 20, 1904, each of the defendants confessed to him his commission of the crime, and that he made no promise of reward or immunity and made no threat to either of them. According to his testimony the facts and circumstances pertinent to these confessions were these: The defendants were arrested on October 17, 1904. On the next day the inspector took each of them separately out of his cell and upstairs into an office used by the police, where Sorenson denied any knowledge of the robbery, and Hodge 'would neither deny or admit he was in the robbery. ' The witness testified:

'There was nobody present except the man I was talking to and myself. I took them up separately. I took Sorenson up first, and he said he had nothing to do with it. Had about a five-minute talk with him at that time. I told him I had an absolutely good case against him. I brought him up myself and took him down myself and had the conversation myself.'

After these conversations the inspector caused the defendants to be put in adjoining cells, where they could talk with each other, saw them every day, and on the morning of October 20, 1904, he again took them out one at a time and talked with them, and he testified:

'I asked Hodge if he was ready to talk to me to-day, and he said: 'I think I am.' I asked him if he was ready to tell me what he knew about the Van Meter robbery. He said he was. I asked him then, 'Was you in it,' and he says, 'I was there.' I says, 'How much did you get out of it,' and he says, 'Thirty dollars."

The witness testified to many other questions and answers during this conversation, but to no statement from Hodge which was not extracted from him by an inquiry of the inspector. He testified that he took Sorenson out of his cell to the fire and police room on the same day, and that, while he and Sorenson were alone in the room, the latter said that he was in the Van Meter post office robbery. These were other parts of his testimony:

'I never wanted him to tell me. It was not the object of those interviews. It was to get the facts. I didn't think of getting any other witness there when he made the confession. He did not want anyone to know he said this to me. * * * He said he wanted to plead guilty of the charge of robbing the Van Meter post office, and tears were running down his cheeks, and he asked me to intercede with the judge, and, if we could arrange to have the sentence suspended or a parole, he would come out and go to work and would turn out more criminals than I ever dreamed of. * * * I told him I did not know what they would get if they pleaded guilty, that they could throw themselves on the mercy of the court and take their chances. I told them that by serving a term in the government case that the state case would probably be forgotten. The thing for them to do was to plead guilty and throw themselves on the mercy of this court, and the matter probably would be overlooked in the state court. * * * They made these statements while they were prisoners. Sometimes they were handcuffed when taken from one place to another. I carried a loaded revolver all the time. I took my gun out in the presence of Sorenson and asked him if that was the gun he had at Van Meter. It was the gun found on him when he was arrested.'

Immediately upon the close of the cross-examination of this witness counsel for the defendants moved to strike out all his testimony relative to these confessions, upon the ground that it was incompetent, irrelevant, and immaterial. The motion was denied, an exception was noted, and this ruling was assigned as error.

Counsel for the government argue that the statements of the inspector that the state's case would probably be forgotten, if the defendants pleaded guilty to the case of the United States, were not made until after the confessions were extracted. But the evidence does not establish this fact, and as the burden was upon the government to prove that the confessions were voluntarily made before they became admissible, and any doubt upon this subject must be resolved in favor of the defendants, the contention cannot be sustained.

For more than 200 years the law of England and America has been that confessions induced by compulsion or by any cause legally sufficient to engender in the mind of the accused hope or fear in respect of the crime charged are inadmissible as evidence of the guilt of the accused.

In 2 Hawkins, Pleas of the Crown (8th Ed.) p. 595, Sec. 34, there is an admirable statement of the law upon this subject, which seems to have been copied from a note to the sixth edition of that work, and which reads in this way:

'And as the human mind

...