Law Commons^™

Confessions In An International Age: Re-Examining Admissibility Through The Lens Of Foreign Interrogations, Julie Tanaka Siegel

Michigan Law Review

In Colorado v. Connelly the Supreme Court held that police misconduct is necessary for an inadmissible confession. Since the Connelly decision, courts and scholars have framed the admissibility of a confession in terms of whether it successfully deters future police misconduct. As a result, the admissibility of a confession turns largely on whether U.S. police acted poorly, and only after overcoming this threshold have courts considered factors pointing to the reliability and voluntariness of the confession. In the international context, this translates into the routine and almost mechanic admission of confessions— even when there is clear indication that the confession …

The Future Of Confession Law: Toward Rules For The Voluntariness Test, Eve Brensike Primus

Michigan Law Review

Confession law is in a state of collapse. Fifty years ago, three different doctrines imposed constitutional limits on the admissibility of confessions in criminal cases: Miranda doctrine under the Fifth Amendment, Massiah doctrine under the Sixth Amendment, and voluntariness doctrine under the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. But in recent years, the Supreme Court has gutted Miranda and Massiah, effectively leaving suspects with only voluntariness doctrine to protect them during police interrogations. The voluntariness test is a notoriously vague case-by-case standard. In this Article, I argue that if voluntariness is going to be the framework for …

Empty Promises: Miranda Warnings In Noncustodial Interrogations, Aurora Maoz

Michigan Law Review

You have the right to remain silent; anything you say can be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney; if you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided to you at the state's expense. In 2010, the Supreme Court declined an opportunity to resolve the question of what courts should do when officers administer Miranda warnings in a situation where a suspect is not already in custody-in other words, when officers are not constitutionally required to give or honor these warnings. While most courts have found a superfluous warning to be …

Proximate Cause In Constitutional Torts: Holding Interrogators Liable For Fifth Amendment Violations At Trial, Joel Flaxman

Michigan Law Review

This Note argues for the approach taken by the Sixth Circuit in McKinley: a proper understanding of the Fifth Amendment requires holding that an officer who coerces a confession that is used at trial to convict a defendant in violation of the right against self-incrimination should face liability for the harm of conviction and imprisonment. Part I examines how the Supreme Court and the circuits have applied the concept of common law proximate causation to constitutional torts and argues that lower courts are wrong to blindly adopt common law rules without reference to the constitutional rights at stake. It …

Stories About Miranda, George C. Thomas Iii

Michigan Law Review

It is no exaggeration to say that Yale Kamisar was present at the creation of Miranda v. Arizona. To be sure, the seeds of Miranda had been sown in earlier cases, particularly Escobedo v. Illinois, but Escobedo was a Sixth Amendment right to counsel case. Professor Kamisar first saw the potential for extending the theory of Escob edo to the Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination. Escob edo theorized that a healthy criminal justice system requires that the accused know their rights and are encouraged to exercise them. The Escobedo Court read history to teach that no system …

Chopping Miranda Down To Size, Michael Chertoff

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Confessions, Truth, and the Law by Joseph D. Grano

Reply: Self-Incrimination And The Constitution: A Brief Rejoinder To Professor Kamisar, Akhil Reed Amar, Renée B. Lettow

Michigan Law Review

A Reply to Yale Kamisar's Response to the "Fifth Amendment Principles: The Self-Incrimination Clause"

Fifth Amendment First Principles: The Self-Incrimination Clause, Akhil Reed Amar, Renée B. Lettow

Michigan Law Review

In Part I of this article, we examine the global puzzle of the Self-Incrimination Clause and the local confusion or perversion lurking behind virtually every key word and phrase in the clause as now construed. In Part II we elaborate our reading of the clause and show how it clears up the local problems and solves the overall puzzle.

The Historical Origins Of The Privilege Against Self-Incrimination At Common Law, John H. Langbein

Michigan Law Review

This essay explains that the true origins of the common law privilege are to be found not in the high politics of the English revolutions, but in the rise of adversary criminal procedure at the end of the eighteenth century. The privilege against self-incrimination at common law was the work of defense counsel.

Part I of this essay discusses the several attributes of early modem criminal procedure that combined, until the end of the eighteenth century, to prevent the development of the common law privilege. Part II explains how prior scholarship went astray in locating the common law privilege against …

Taking The Fifth: Reconsidering The Origins Of The Constitutional Privilege Against Self-Incrimination, Eben Moglen

Michigan Law Review

The purpose of this essay is to cast doubt on two basic elements of the received historical wisdom concerning the privilege as it applies to British North America and the early United States. First, early American criminal procedure reflected less tenderness toward the silence of the criminal accused than the received wisdom has claimed. The system could more reasonably be said to have depended on self-incrimination than to have eschewed it, and this dependence increased rather than decreased during the provincial period for reasons intimately connected with the economic and social context of the criminal trial in colonial America.

Second, …

Police-Obtained Evidence And The Constitution: Distinguishing Unconstitutionally Obtained Evidence From Unconstitutionally Used Evidence, Arnold H. Loewy

Michigan Law Review

The article will consider four different types of police-obtained evidence: evidence obtained from an unconstitutional search and seizure, evidence obtained from a Miranda violation, confessions and lineup identifications obtained in violation of the sixth amendment right to counsel, and coerced confessions. My conclusions are that evidence obtained from an unconstitutional search and seizure is excluded because of the police misconduct by which it was obtained. On the other hand, evidence obtained from a Miranda violation is (or ought to be) excluded because use of that evidence compromises the defendant's procedural right not to be compelled to be a witness against …

18 U.S.C. § 3501 And The Admissibility Of Confessions Obtained During Unnecessary Prearraignment Delay, Matthew W. Frank

Michigan Law Review

Part I thus argues that the admissibility of post-sixth-hour confessions is governed by Mallory, under which a voluntary confession is inadmissible if, but only if, it follows a period of unnecessary delay. Part II addresses a possible objection to this conclusion - namely, that, with limited exceptions, subsection 350l(c) renders all post-sixth hour confessions inadmissible without regard to the reasonableness of the prearraignment delay. This interpretation is derived by negative implication from the proviso in subsection 350l(c) and would require courts to suppress confessions even though there has been no unnecessary delay, and even though the confessions would be …

Selling The Idea To Tell The Truth: The Professional Interrogator And Modern Confessions Law, Joseph D. Grano

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Criminal Interrogation and Confessions (3d edition) by Fred E. Inbau, John E. Reid, and Joseph P. Buckley

Interrogation Without Questions: Rhode Island V. Innis And United States V. Henry, Welsh S. White

Michigan Law Review

In Rhode Island v. Innis, the Court defined "interrogation" within the meaning of Miranda; and in United States v. Henry, it defined "deliberate elicitation" within the meaning of Massiah. This article explores the implications of Innis and Henry, suggests readings of the new tests consistent with their purposes, and applies the tests to several situations where the scope of the fifth and sixth amendment protections remains unclear.

Judicial Examination Of The Accused--A Remedy For The Third Degree, Paul G. Kauper

Michigan Law Review

Reprint from 30 Michigan Law Review 1224.

In its report on "Lawlessness in Law Enforcement" the Wickersham Commission concludes that in the police systems of a number of American municipalities the "third degree" is very generally practiced as a means of extorting from accused persons under arrest confessions, incriminating statements, and other information of value to the police. The conclusion of the Commission confirms the results of private investigation made in the same field. It is true that the methods of inquiry pursued by the Commission leave doubt as to the accuracy of some of the facts reported. But the …

Custodial Police Interrogation In Our Nation's Capital: The Attempt To Implement Miranda, Richard J. Medalie, Leonard Zeitz, Paul Alexander

Michigan Law Review

In his attempt to define the meaning of democracy, Carl Becker, looking back to Plato's view of society, observed that "[a]ll human institutions, we are told, have their ideal forms laid away in heaven, and we do not need to be told that the actual institutions conform but indifferently to these ideal counterparts." Becker's observation may well set the perspective from which to view what occurred when the attempt was made in the District of Columbia to implement the Supreme Court's decision in Miranda v. Arizona.

Criminal Law And Procedure-Recent Developments-(A Service For Returning Veterans), John B. Waite

Michigan Law Review

In discussing developments of the criminal law during the war years it is convenient to group them into the three conventional divisions-substantive, procedural, and penal.

Evidence--Recent Developments (A Service For Returning Veterans), John E. Tracy

Michigan Law Review

The developments in the law of evidence in the war years have not been great. They have been mainly along the lines of tests for witnesses, the use of confessions in criminal cases, the interpretation by the courts of the so-called "Business Entries" Act and the adoption by the American Law Institute of a proposed Code of Evidence.

Evidence-Police Regulation By Rules Of Evidence, John Barker Waite

Michigan Law Review

The judicial rules of Evidence, said their great expounder, "were never meant to be an indirect process of punishment." Yet twice the Supreme Court has promulgated new rules of evidence for precisely that purpose. The rule that evidence is inadmissible, regardless of its relevance and materiality, if it was obtained by unreasonable search was first suggested by Justice Bradley, who wrote the majority opinion in Boyd v. United States in 1886. The other rule was voiced in 1943 by Justice Frankfurter, writing the majority opinion in McNabb v. United States. And each rule demonstrates the inherent evil of judicial …

The Investigating Magistrate (Juge D'Instruction) In European Criminal Procedure, Morris Ploscowe

Michigan Law Review

For nearly five centuries the distinctive figure in the preliminary stages of European criminal proceedings has been the investigating magistrate, known in France as the juge d'instruction. Although temporarily eclipsed by the revolutionary reforms in France in 1791, he was soon re-established. In other European countries the juge d'instruction continued to be the central figure in the preliminary procedure through all the reforms achieved by the liberal movements of the nineteenth century. The investigating magistrate has remained a purely Continental institution. In theory and in practice he embodies the essential difference between Continental and Anglo-American criminal procedure preliminary to trial.

Criminal Law And Procedure-Admissibility Of Evidence-Rule As To Determination Of Preliminary Question Of Fact

Michigan Law Review

Following his arrest for murder, the defendant was held thirty-six hours before being arraigned for the purpose of obtaining a confession. On trial the defendant objected to introduction of the confession on the ground that it was involuntary, having been induced by wrongful detention and beating by the police. Held, failure, after due request, to instruct the jury that unnecessary delay in arraignment is prohibited by law and that such delay might be considered in determining whether or not the confession was voluntary was reversible error. People v. Alex, (N. Y. 1934) 192 N. E. 289.

Judicial Examination Of The Accused-A Remedy For The Third Degree, Paul G. Kauper

Michigan Law Review

In its report on "Lawlessness in Law Enforcement" the Wickersham Commission concludes that in the police systems of a number of American municipalities the "third degree" is very generally practiced as a means of extorting from accused persons under arrest confessions, incriminating statements, and other information of value to the police. The conclusion of the Commission confirms the results of private investigation made in the same field. It is true that the. methods of inquiry pursued by the Commission leave doubt as to the accuracy of some of the facts reported. But the quality of the evidence submitted as the …

Evidence - Privileged Communication

Michigan Law Review

In a suit for divorce on the ground of adultery, a Luthern clergyman refused to testify concerning a disclosure made to him in his religious capacity by the defendant husband, on the ground that it was a privileged communication under the Minnesota statute. The district court adjudged him in contempt of court. Upon certiorari to the supreme court of Minnesota, held, the communication was privileged, and the order was reversed. In re Swenson (Minn. 1931) 237 N.W. 589.

The Supreme Court's Construction Of The Self-Incrimination Clause, Edward S. Corwin

Michigan Law Review

The second pivotal decision of the court in construction of the self-incrimination clause is that in Counselman v. Hitchcock, decided in 1892. An advantageous approach to it is furnished by certain earlier state and federal court decisions applying the common law regarding the privilege of witnesses.

Recent Important Decisions

Michigan Law Review

A collection of recent important court decisions.

Recent Important Decisions

Michigan Law Review

A collection of recent important court decisions.