United States v. Mitchell

• Decision Date: 24 April 1944
• Docket Number: Nos. 514,515,s. 514
• Parties: UNITED STATES v. MITCHELL (two cases)
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

322 U.S. 65

64 S.Ct. 896

88 L.Ed. 1140

UNITED STATES

v MITCHELL (two cases).

Nos. 514, 515.

Argued March 27, 1944.

Decided April 24, 1944.

Rehearing Denied May 29, 1944.

See 322 U.S. 770, 64 S.Ct. 1257.

Mr. Charles Fahy, Sol.Gen., of Washington, D.C., for plaintiff.

Mr. James J. Laughlin, of Washington, D.C., for respondent.

Mr. Justice FRANKFURTER delivered the opinion of the Court.

Under each of two indictments for housebreaking and larceny, the defendant Mitchell was separately tried and convicted, but his convictions were reversed by the Court of Appeals, 138 F.2d 426, solely on the ground that the admission of testimony of Mitchell's oral confessions and of stolen property secured from his home through his consent was barred by our decision in McNabb v. United States, 318 U.S. 332, 63 S.Ct. 608, 87 L.Ed. 819. In view of the importance to federal criminal justice of proper application of the McNabb doctrine, we brought the case here. 321 U.S. 756, 64 S.Ct. 485.

Practically the whole body of the law of evidence governing criminal trials in the federal courts has been judge-made. See United States v. Reid, 12 How. 361, 13 L.Ed. 1023, and Funk v. United States, 290 U.S. 371, 54 S.Ct. 212, 78 L.Ed. 369, 93 A.L.R. 1136. Naturally these evidentiary rules have not remained unchanged. They have adapted themselves to progressive notions of relevance in the pursuit of truth through adversary litigation, and have reflected dominant conceptions of standards appropriate for the effective and civilized administration of law. As this Court when making a new departure in this field took occasion to say a decade ago, 'The public policy of one generation may not, under changed conditions, be the public policy of another.' Funk v. United States, supra, 290 U.S. at page 381, 54 S.Ct. at page 215, 78 L.Ed. 369, 93 A.L.R. 1136. The McNabb decision was merely another expression of this historic tradition, whereby rules of evidence for criminal trials in the federal courts are made a part of living law and not treated as a mere collection of wooden rules in a game.

That case respected the policy underlying enactments of Congress as well as that of a massive body of state legislation which, whatever may be the minor variations of language, require that arresting officers shall with reasonable promptness bring arrested persons before a committing authority. Such legislation, we said in the McNabb case, '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 im- plications of secret interrogation of persons accused of crime. It reflects not a sentimental but a sturdy view of law enforcement. It outlaws easy but self-defeating ways in which brutality is substituted for brains as an instrument of crime detection. A statute carrying such purposes is expressive of a general legislative policy to which courts should not be heedless when appropriate situations call for its application.' 318 U.S. at page 344, 63 S.Ct. at page 614, 87 L.Ed. 819.

In the circumstances of the McNabb case we found such an appropriate situation, in that the defendants were illegally detained under aggravating circumstances: one of them was subjected to unremitting questioning by half a dozen police officers for five or six hours and the other two for two days. We held that 'a conviction resting on evidence secured through such a flagrant disregard of the procedure which Congress has commanded cannot be allowed to stand without making the courts themselves accomplices in wilful disobedience of law. Congress has not explicitly forbidden the use of evidence so procured. But to permit such evidence to be made the basis of a conviction in the federal courts would stultify the policy which Congress has enacted into law.' 318 U.S. at page 345, 63 S.Ct. at page 615, 87 L.Ed. 819. For like reasons it was held in the Nardone case that where wiretapping is prohibited by Congress the fruits of illegal wiretapping constitute illicit evidence and are therefore inadmissible. Nardone v. United States, 302 U.S. 379, 58 S.Ct. 275, 82 L.Ed. 314; Id., 308 U.S. 338, 60 S.Ct. 266, 84 L.Ed. 307. Inexcusable detention for the purpose of illegally extracting evidence from an accused, and the successful extraction of such inculpatory statements by continuous questioning for many hours under psychological pressure, were the decisive features in the McNabb case which led us to rule that a conviction on such evidence could not stand.

We are dealing with the admissibility of evidence in criminal trials in the federal courts. Review by this Court of state convictions presents a very different situation, confined as it is within very narrow limits. Our sole authority is to ascertain whether that which a state court permitted violated the basic safeguards of the Fourteenth Amendment. Therefore, in cases coming from the state courts in matters of this sort, we are concerned solely with determining whether a confession is the result of torture, physical or psychological, and not the offspring of reasoned choice. How difficult and often elusive an inquiry this implies, our decisions make manifest. And for the important relation between illegal incommunicado detention and 'third-degree' practices, see IV, Report, National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement (better known as the Wickersham Commission) (1931) pp. 4, 35 et seq., 152; and the debates in the House of Commons on the Savidge case, 217 H.C. Deb. (5th ser. 1928) pp. 1216—1220, 1303—1339, 1921—1931, and Inquiry in Regard to the Interrogation by the Police of Miss Savidge, Cmd. 3147 (1928); Report of the Royal Commission on Police Powers and Procedure, Cmd. 3297 (1929). But under the duty of formulating rules of evidence for federal prosecutions, we are not confined to the constitutional question of ascertaining when a confession comes of a free choice and when it is extorted by force, however subtly applied. See United States v. Oppenheimer, 242 U.S. 85, 88, 37 S.Ct. 68, 69, 61 L.Ed. 161, 3 L.R.A. 516. The McNabb decision was an exercise of our duty to formulate policy appropriate for criminal trials in the federal courts. We adhere to that decision and to the views on which it was based. For cases in which applications of the McNabb doctrine by circuit courts of appeals were left unchallenged by the Government, see United States v. Haupt, 7 Cir., 136 F.2d 661; Gros v. United States, 9 Cir., 136 F.2d 878; Runnels v. United States, 9 Cir., 138 F.2d 346.

But the foundations for application of the McNabb doctrine are here totally lacking. Unlike the situation in other countries, see, for instance, §§ 25 and 26 of the Indian Evidence Act, 1872,¹ under the prevailing American criminal procedure, as was pointed out in the McNabb case, 'The mere fact that a confession was made while in the custody of the police does not render in inadmissible.' 318 U.S. at page...